Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1229, Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1230, Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 245 and ask for its immediate consideration.

The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

H. Res. 245

Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule XVIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R. 1229) to amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to facilitate the safe and timely production of American energy resources from the Gulf of Mexico. The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Natural Resources. After general debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. The amendment recommended by the Committee on Natural Resources now printed in the bill shall be considered as adopted in the House and in the Committee of the Whole. The bill, as amended, shall be considered as the original bill for the purpose of further amendment under the five-minute rule and shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill, as amended, are waived. No further amendment to the bill, as amended, shall be in order except those printed in part A of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution. Each further amendment may be offered only in the order printed in the report, may be offered only by a Member designated in the report, shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for the time specified in the report equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole. All points of order against such further amendments are waived. At the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the Committee shall rise and report the bill, as amended, to the House with such further amendments as may have been adopted. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit with or without instructions.

Sec. 2. At any time after the adoption of this resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule XVIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R. 1230) to require the Secretary of the Interior to conduct certain offshore oil and gas lease sales, and for other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Natural Resources. After general debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. The bill shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. No amendment to the bill shall be in order except those printed in part B of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution. Each such amendment may be offered only in the order printed in the report, may be offered only by a Member designated in the report, shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for the time specified in the report equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole. All points of order against such amendments are waived. At the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the Committee shall rise and report the bill to the House with such amendments as may have been adopted. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit with or without instructions.

Sec. 3. In the engrossment of H.R. 1229, the Clerk shall--

(1) add the text of H.R. 1230, as passed by the House, as new matter at the end of H.R. 1229;

(2) conform the title of H.R. 1229 to reflect the addition of H.R. 1230, as passed by the House, to the engrossment;

(3) assign appropriate designations to provisions within the engrossment; and

(4) conform cross-references and provisions for short titles within the engrossment.

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Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 245 provides for the consideration of two very important bills, H.R. 1229, the Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, and H.R. 1230, the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act, both under a structured rule. With many amendments, all of which are Democrat amendments having been made in order, this is a very fair rule.

I commend the sponsor of the two bills, the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, Mr. Hastings of Washington, for his leadership in bringing both of these bills to the House.

H.R. 1229 is a bill that goes to the heart of the bureaucratic delays, which are preventing the approval of drilling permits within the Gulf of Mexico; and it modifies the standards and procedures governing Federal leases and permits in order to streamline the process, making the development of these domestic resources a reality instead of the status quo of paying lip service to drilling and then stifling drilling through bureaucratic inaction.

H.R. 1230 is a bill that would direct the sale of oil and gas leases within the Outer Continental Shelf, reversing a failed administration policy of canceling and delaying those processes.

Mr. Speaker, over the last 2 years, many Republicans have come to this floor and have sung the same refrain of ``show us the jobs.'' It was, indeed, a nice song and a catchy tune--so catchy that the minority of today seems to have been picking up on that kind of song as well. I don't expect to hear that today, or at least we ought not to hear it today, because the two bills before us under this rule are real bills that create real jobs for people.

Unlike the bills we have seen over the past couple of years which have led us to a situation where today there are twice as many workers in the government as there are in all of manufacturing in this Nation, which is an exact reverse of the situation this Nation was in in 1960, these are not going to be government jobs which attack the taxpayers and suck the money out of their wallets to fund them. These are going to be real jobs that grow the private sector, that expand the economy, that provide wealth, and that will provide, actually, millions of new government revenues coming into this country.

The situation we find ourselves in today with regard to energy is one that is detrimental to everybody. Everyone who goes to the pump to fill their cars recognizes the cost is increasing and will continue to increase. They recognize that the situation we are in puts all our jobs in jeopardy, and it is because of the inaction of this particular administration. The President has continually said that he wants to do action, to move forward, to develop American energy, but the actions of his administration have, quite frankly, failed to meet the rhetoric of the administration.

The problem has always been a fundamental flaw in our Nation's energy plan. Last May, the Deepwater Horizon accident occurred, which was a tragedy; and we must thank all of those who helped to solve that particular problem; but, unfortunately, the administration's response to that tragedy has turned it into a catastrophe and one which destroys jobs.

Immediately, a moratorium on all sorts of development was put into place. Prior to that moratorium being put into place, there were 52 approved and pending permits, and that moratorium was lifted in October; but of those 52, only 10 permits have been issued since that time. Two of them are new in deepwater and are eight of the 52 that were originally done. That means there are over 40 still approved and still stalled in what has become a de facto moratorium, caused by a foot-dragging of this administration that, what one columnist said, is moving at a glacial pace. More rigs have left our shore--12--to go to other places in the world where they are welcomed and where they are developing energy sources, where they don't have to face the red tape and the foot-dragging than have actually been approved by this administration.

A perfect example is Seahawk Drilling, a company that had over 500 jobs and 20 rigs that went into chapter 11 bankruptcy. The president of that company stated only one reason for that bankruptcy and that loss of jobs, which was the de facto moratorium of inaction done by this administration in this area in 2008 in a response to an arbitrary drilling ban that was lifted by both the President and Congress. It created a 5-year plan. Virginia was supposed to start the exploration process in 2011, but the Secretary of the Interior delayed that until 2012 and then later delayed all exploration on the Atlantic coast until after 2017.

In the Gulf of Mexico, two other sales were canceled and moved out from this year, which was when they were supposed to begin, once again into next year. It became so bad that a judge in New Orleans gave the administration 30 days to start moving on these projects, saying that what was happening by this administration was increasingly inexcusable and that not acting at all is not a lawful action.

The result of this has simply been catastrophic for jobs in America. The Obama administration has admitted in its official memorandum that, for those days of its official moratorium, 12,000 jobs were lost; but what is more significant is the de facto moratorium there. An LSU study simply said, if this were sustained for 18 months in the gulf area, there would be 24,532 jobs lost and in the Nation 36,137 jobs lost simply because of what we are not doing in the Gulf of Mexico.

It is very simple to understand how this works. Each platform that is out there drilling has 90 to 150 employees. If you add the production team as well as the exploration team, you can multiply that by a factor of four. So you have almost per every drilling up to 1,400 jobs that are tied to that particular project with $1,800 a week as the average wage.

That means for every one of those drills that is not put back into production, it is $5 million to $10 million per month per platform that is lost to this economy; and the ripple effect within the economy for our energy uses as well as jobs is, once again, staggering as this

administration is, indeed, going at a glacial pace. In Virginia alone, 2,000 jobs will be estimated to be lost if the de facto moratorium that pushes everything to 2017 is allowed to take place.

Now, this action, or inaction, by the administration costs every American. It costs us at the gas pump as we see the cost of running our cars increasing almost daily, and this hurts the poor worse than anyone else. It is estimated that every American will pay $700 more this year for gasoline than least year. Obviously, those at the lower end of the economic scale are the ones who are hurt the most. For every cent that is increased in gas at the pump, that is $1 billion that is taken out of household incomes in this country; and it makes sure that Americans are then put at the mercy of foreign oil development and foreign energy sources, which may not necessarily like us, and sometimes they're just flat out bad guys.

It also has other areas in which it has affected everyone--once again, those at the lower end of the income scale the most. For every dime that diesel goes up, that is $400 million that is added to the agricultural industry, which is what we eat, which is tacked onto our food prices. You have to have oil for fertilizer. As that goes up, the cost of fertilizer goes up; the cost of running machinery goes up; the cost of food goes up; the cost of pharmaceuticals, plastics. If you go into the emergency room, everything that is not metal has some element of oil that developed it, and all of those are increasing.

Now, there are only two ways that we can handle this situation. First, you can go with the old concept of supply and demand and simply increase production, which is what these two bills are trying to do; or you can go to the approach that this administration seems to be asking us to do, which is to cut our standard of living, accept gasoline prices at the European level, and beg Saudi Arabia to be nice to us--to put our futures in the hands of OPEC and then amazingly say we can also solve these problems simply by taxing oil companies at a higher rate.

Since 2010, the domestic production of energy in this country has decreased 16 percent. In this year, next year and the year after that, we estimate, unless we make changes, that a quarter of a million barrels of oil will be decreased in our production rate in each of those years. The only area in which any energy production has been increasing is on private property. Unfortunately for this country, almost all of the energy that we have, most of the energy that we can develop, is on public lands, which is controlled by the government, which is doing nothing now to help develop that.

This is a time where pragmatism is much better than a failed ideology of restrictions. Now, what these two bills do is to simply reverse the job-killing delays that have been taking place. In H.R. 1229, it reforms the law to require leaseholders to receive permits to drill before they start drilling; and it will do it for the first time by law, not simply by a regulation. It demands that the Secretary of the Interior conduct and approve safety revenues, once again, for the first time in history.

More importantly, it ends the de facto moratorium by demanding prompt guidelines and action. It says that the Secretary of the Interior will have 30 days in which to deal with these issues and then can have up to two 15-day extensions--a total of 60 days to do the review.

Now, while that may seem to some as a quick path, it's not when you look at the history of what has been done. Before the moratorium went into effect, it was taking 5 to 15 days to do the drilling leases and permits.

One company was done in nine days just recently. What the problem is is that most of these are simply not being done simply because of inaction. It also says for those that were approved prior to the May 27 moratorium, you've got 30 days to get them going again. This is plenty of time to do the work.

It also does something else for the first time. It provides an expedited hearing process so that legal rights are not lost--they are protected--but you will not go back into a concept of a never-ending lawsuit moratorium.

In 1230, the bill recognizes that this year will be the first time since 1958 that we have a possibility of no offshore lease sales. And it wants to reverse that action to proceed promptly with the 5-year plan so that things, for example, in Virginia will be in effect within 1 year, and those that were scheduled in the gulf can be done within 1 year of the passage of this bill.

This bill simply will create billions in Federal Reserve revenues coming in, and it will create billions in our economy, and it will create jobs.

I hate to say this, but under President Obama, the cost of energy has skyrocketed. The administration has actively blocked and delayed energy production. It's cost jobs. It's raised energy prices. It's made the United States more reliant on unstable foreign countries for our energy. Through the American Energy Initiative, this House is actively working to increase American energy production to lower gas prices, to create American jobs, to generate revenue to help reduce the deficit, and to decrease our dependence on foreign energy.

The United States Government has had a long history of sporadic attempts to respond to oil and gas prices. Usually, we have missed the mark. But, unfortunately, oil is still the lifeblood of the world and will be for most of our lives. That is why 70 countries and 31 States in the United States are involved in the process. Prices are influenced by the signals that are given by worldwide circumstances and also by government policy.

These two bills are the first of several signals that this House wants to send to the world and to the economy that says our goal should be to come as close to economic and energy self-sufficiency and independence as possible. We are not an energy-poor Nation; and we need to be developing the resources in every way possible, including in the gulf, including in the Outer Continental Shelf, and including on our land sources. That is our future if we want to do anything to create jobs and help the American people. That is specifically what these two bills are aimed to do.

With such, Mr. Speaker, this is a good rule and a fair rule; and the underlying piece of legislation is entirely worthy of our support.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. Speaker, let me just make a couple of very quick points, if I could.

Once again, the purpose of these two bills is to start our process going towards Americans having adequate energy supplies to live their lives. And it's one of the things that you either increase production or you try to cut back. Our goal is to increase the production.

The idea that what we are doing is in some way making safety less significant is silly. There are new safety rules that have been in place. They are ready. They are prepared. They are ready to go forward.

The myth of subsidies to Big Oil is one of the things also that we need to talk about because even my fellow Democrats have admitted that the President's plan to push a tax hike on energy taxes does result in the loss of American jobs and higher taxes on independent oil and gas companies.

I love the fact that we always spin things by talking about Big Oil. But the nonpartisan Politifact.com noted that a majority of the U.S. oil production comes not from the biggest multinational oil companies but from independent firms. American production activities are dominated by these independent producers who drill 95 percent of the Nation's natural gas and oil wells, accounting for as much as 67 percent of the total U.S. natural gas and oil production.

Often we try to find some kind of straw man which to attack, and the idea of Big Oil is one of those easiest ones to do. But in reality, if those tax hikes were to go into place on production, you would not be hitting the Big Oil companies; you're going to be hitting small companies which have 100 or fewer employees, not only offshore, but on the shore as well. That is the attack.

I'm sorry. I am not validating President Obama's leadership on this issue. To me, leadership means you do something. Inaction is not leadership.

It's not the government picking winners and losers. What this administration is doing by the de facto moratorium, the inability to move forward on this issue is simply picking losers, losers in the field, losers for America, losers in jobs, and that is wrong.

This tries to get us going ahead in an area and in a way in which we can do it, we should do it, we have the capability of doing it. All we simply need to do is do it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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