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“REBUTTAL COMMENTS ON HEALTH CARE, THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH ON DEFENSE, AND ENERGY IN THE WEST” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1707-H1713 on May 1, 2001.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
{time} 2000
REBUTTAL COMMENTS ON HEALTH CARE, THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH ON DEFENSE,
AND ENERGY IN THE WEST
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pence). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, once again I want to spend a little time with an evening chat. I want to discuss this evening a couple of issues, but first of all I will rebut a couple of the comments that were made in the last hour.
As my colleagues understand the rules on the House floor, the previous speakers were allowed to speak 1 hour unrebutted, and now I have an opportunity to speak for an hour. It was not my intent when I came over here this evening to rebut this, but some of these statements were so strong that certainly my colleagues deserve to hear what the other side of the story is.
It reminded me of a courtroom, one time in a closing argument where the statement was made that if you have ever been a parent you understand that if there is a problem between two children and you separate the children, each child comes up and tells you an entirely different version of what happened. And it is not that either child is intending to lie; it is that through the eyes of those two different children, they have seen different versions. And I think that is what happens here.
It is not necessarily between Republicans and Democrats, although clearly there is a line drawn between the moderate and conservatives versus the liberal side of the Democratic party, but I think what we heard in the preceding hour certainly reflects the more liberal side, the left side, of the Democratic Party. I do not think it is the mainstream of America, and I do not think it represents the mainstream in this body.
I mean, how many of my colleagues will turn their backs on the elderly? Give me a break. There is nobody in these Chambers that intentionally turn their backs on the elderly. That is an exact statement that was made here just a few minutes ago, that our President, through his policy, turns his back on the elderly. As strongly as I disagreed with President Clinton in the previous administration, I never accused him of turning his back on the elderly.
It is these kinds of emotionally driven comments that are really nothing but, in my opinion, an effort to have emotion drive the issue instead of facts. We cannot come to a good solution if the means to get to that solution is driven entirely on emotion. That is exactly why this country has got financial problems; it is exactly why this country got into a deficit, because time after time after time Members of this body go out, and in their leadership strategy they lead the public by emotion; and then they leave it to the other Members to try to dig out what the facts are.
We see it out in the West. We see it all the time in the West on the public lands, where emotion drives the issue, not the science of the forests, not the science of the use of the water, not the science of using dams for hydropower, but the emotion of it. All the good of a hydroelectric power plant in the West can be overcome by simply tying it to some kind of degradation of Yellowstone National Park.
So what I would say to my colleagues that just preceded me speaking is, come on, let us talk about the facts. Next time I would be happy to join those colleagues. Bring a pencil and a calculator and let us see how we are going to afford exactly what they prescribed this evening.
Of course all of us in this country are having problems with pricing on prescription drugs. Of course, everybody that I would run a survey on and asked if they would like help on their prescription drugs are going to say yes. Anytime somebody offers to help pay our obligations with others' money, not our own money, with someone else's money, well, we are happy to accept that.
The proposals that were being made this evening by these preceding speakers, they are emotional. They sound wonderful. How can you lose? Somebody else gets to pick up the tab. And by the way, anybody that says maybe we ought to do the addition, maybe we ought to figure out the bottom line, that people will pay more and that we will have the government interfering more, maybe we ought to take a look at that. But the minute we say that, we get a comment from the left side that says, well, they are turning their backs on the elderly.
And it is some of these very same types of comments, or in my experience these types of representatives from that side of the party, that show up here and talk about how we turn our backs on education or we are ignoring the children or we do not care about this or we do not care about that. I have yet, I have yet to find one Congressman, Democrat or Republican, or independent, I have yet to find one Congressman that does not like education. I have yet to find one Congressman that intentionally or with any kind of design whatsoever turns their back on the elderly.
There are a lot of hard-working focused people in this body, none of which by the way, in my opinion, deserve to have the label put on them that they are turning their back on the elderly. And the same thing applies for the administration, this administration as well as the previous administration.
As I mentioned earlier, my disagreements with the Clinton administration were clear, and in my opinion they were very strong disagreements with the Clinton administration; but I never went to that administration and said they turned their back on the elderly or they turned their back on this or they turned their back on that.
So I think, really, in order for us to get to a solution in regards to prescription and health care in this country, we need to put some of this emotional rhetoric aside and sit down at a table. And when my colleagues come to that table, they had better bring a pencil and a calculator, because we cannot put together a wish list without figuring out, number one, who pays for it; number two, how we are going to pay for it; and, number three, what are the honest expectations of that cost.
Take a look, for example, when Social Security was first conceived back in the 1930s. It was never intended to be a full retirement. Do not kid yourself. Social Security was never intended by the people of this country to be a full retirement package. Take a look at where we are today. Today, it is an expectation. It is an entitlement program for full retirement. That is what some people expect. As a result, some of us on this floor continue to give and give and give; and yet this system now, for future generations, for our young people, and if my colleagues want to talk about somebody we need to pay attention to, look at this young generation and try to explain to them with a straight face that there is going to be Social Security dollars around.
One of our problems today is we pay out $118,000 for people on Social Security today. For a couple we pay out $118,000 more on average than they put in the system. Now, how does that work? It does not work very well.
Later this evening I am going to talk a little about energy. You cannot continue to tell the consumer out there that their prices are not going to increase on the demand side and pay escalating prices on the supply side. That is exactly what is happening with the kind of calculations and the figuring with these promises that are being made about health care in this country.
Of course we want to improve health care; but dadgummit, we have to be straight with constituents. We have got to be straight with the American people and tell them what it is going to cost. This does not come free. It is so easy to stand on this House floor, it is so easy to stand on this floor and make promises about things we are going to give away. We may not use the word free, but that is the implication. We will handle all the prescription care problems of this country; we can finance all the priorities of this country. Well, let me tell my colleagues, we would not have enough money in the world to finance the priorities. Because every time we would start paying out, for every five priorities out, five more would jump in. My colleagues know that, and I know that.
And when we talk about things like health care, when we talk about things like the military, when we talk about things like education, when we talk about specific projects in our districts, when we are parochial about our districts, we have an obligation to be honest about the cost. We can look at any substantial entitlement program that this government has, any one of them, pick it randomly. Any one my colleagues want to pick, I can promise that at the time it was put into place the costs that were attributed to it, this is what it is going to cost the taxpayer, those costs were minuscule as compared to the actual costs. Here is the cost they promise; here is the cost we end up with.
It is the history of a Democratic government in a body like this, because the incentive is not to be straight with the taxpayers and the citizens of this country. The temptation is to go out there and promise everything for nothing. And that is exactly the problem today we now face in California. In California, the leadership out there, the elected leadership and the appointed leadership out there promised the citizens of the State of California, look, we do not have to take any risk of exploration; let us do not allow any generation plants in this State; let us not allow people to drill in this State; let us do not encourage conservation.
Now, they did not say, let us not encourage conservation, the practice they followed discouraged conservation. Because no matter how much energy was wasted, the price did not go up. It was capped. No matter how much the electricity cost, the generators sold it, citizens did not have to worry about it, the State capped it for them. Well, that is an empty promise, in my opinion, just the same as some of the promises or commitments that were made this evening. Those promises are empty if in the long term we do not have the dollars or the resources to provide for those.
And based on the statements I heard here in the last hour, if we stacked up the cost of those commitments or those promises that were made by these speakers, and we put it on our calculators, first of all we would have to have a calculator with a screen that long. We are talking about trillions. We are not talking about billions; we are talking about trillions of dollars. So if my colleagues can figure out how to pay for that, that is what they should do first, then make their promises second.
But what they do is they make the promise, and this is the typical program in the Federal Government, make the promise, put the program into place, then pass the cost of it on to the next generation. That is exactly what has happened here, year after year after year. You get to give out the freebies, you get to be the Santa Claus, but the next generation has to pay for it because my colleagues were clever enough in their legislation to deflect the true cost, to not admit the true cost, or to defer the true cost to some point in the future. That is why we have financial problems.
Being a Congressman does not require a lot of education. All we have to be is a citizen; we have to be a certain age. But we are not required to have a college degree. In fact, it was intentionally designed that way. The reason it was designed that way is our forefathers, justifiably and correctly, thought we wanted people from all walks of life to represent the fine people of this country. But if we could redo it, I think I would go back and say, look, every one of us ought to take business 101 or accounting 101. It ought to be a fundamental requirement before we sit in these chairs. Because what we tend to find happening is there are a lot more promises made than what are funded. Then when they are not funded, we hear comments like I just heard a half an hour ago: they are turning their backs on the elderly. And I have heard it on education: they do not care about kids; education is not a priority with them.
Again, let me point out that I do not know one Congressman, Democrat or Republican, I do not know one for which education is not a priority. It is a priority with everybody in these Chambers. So to make the statements like were made in this preceding hour, in my opinion, are totally unjustified and do not get us at all towards the kind of solution that we need to come towards in order to help bring those prescription prices within range of the average American so they not only can afford it, but they have access to it.
I want to visit about another issue before I get very deep into the subject of energy. I think the President today made a very, very significant speech to the American people. The President talked about how since the Cold War the defense mechanisms of this country have changed. Our military status, our defense in this country, has to be very fluid. It has to change with time. There are a few facts that are very clear. Number one, it is not only the United States, China, and Russia that have nuclear capabilities. Now we have got India, we have got Pakistan, we have Israel, we have Iran, we have North Korea. I mean, the spread of nuclear weapons is a fact.
Now, no matter how many millions of barrels of oil we promise the North Koreans, they are going to continue to develop nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapon kind of shows you are the big guy on the block. There is a lot of countries that want those weapons because it gives them leverage in world negotiations. So we should not be naive and think that these countries are not going to develop these weapons. I think what we have to do is assume that in fact these countries will develop these nuclear weapons, the ones that do not already have them. In fact, the ones that have them probably will, in many cases, like with China and like with Iran, assist other countries in acquiring these nuclear weapons.
So is the answer to build more nuclear weapons? I do not think so. I think our country has adequate military supplies of our weapons. The answer is figure out a device, figure out a missile defense. How do we stop those nuclear weapons? We are not going to stop it by trying to convince these people they should not own them. Of course they are going to own them. They will do anything they can to get their hands on them. What we need to do is to convince them, look, you are going to spend a lot of money developing a nuclear weapon; you are going to take a lot of resources from your people, developing a nuclear weapon; you are going to put a lot of your scientific resources of your country into developing a nuclear weapon.
{time} 2015
And guess what is going to happen, when you come to your product, your final product, i.e. that nuclear weapon, the United States and its allies will have a defense that makes that weapon useless. That is exactly what the goal of this President is. And it is a justifiable goal.
We are crazy, we are certifiably crazy if we continue to turn our face and pretend at some point in the future there is not going to be a nuclear missile headed towards this country. We are irresponsible, in dereliction of our duty if we do not now begin an aggressive effort at putting some kind of a protective shield for this Nation and this Nation's allies and friends so that when that type of an attack comes, we are prepared. And we make the ownership of these kinds of weapons, not weapons of threat or fear, we neutralize them because we have a defensive shield for those kinds of weapons.
It seems to me that it is so basic that with this threat developing out there, in consideration of the fact that we have an obligation to the generations behind us, as well as the generation ahead of us and our own generation, we have an obligation to continue to give this country the best defense that it can possibly have. You are totally disregarding your obligation as a congressman if you continue to ignore the fact that this country needs to defend against a missile attack. A lot of Americans, a lot of your constituents assume because we have NORAD space command out in Colorado Springs and we can detect a missile launch within a few seconds anywhere in the world, in fact we are so good we can track a 6-inch bolt maybe 500 miles into space. We know what is coming at us. A lot of Americans assume that once we know it, we shoot it down. That is not the truth. That is not what can occur out there.
All we can do once we detect a missile launch against the United States of America, all we can do is call up the destination site and say, hold onto your britches, you have an incoming missile.
Do we have an obligation to put up some kind of shield to defend against that? Of course we do. That is exactly the direction that the President of the United States told this country this morning. That he is prepared, that the time has changed, he is prepared to reduce our nuclear stockpiles while at the same time putting together a defensive shield.
Now some of the critics and some people who oppose the military just in general pop right up and say we do not have the technology. It is going to be too expensive. We did not have the technology when we said that we were going to put somebody on the moon. We did not have the technology when we figured out we were going to solve polio. The fact is that we can do it. Americans can put their minds to something and accomplish it.
So these people who want to criticize ought to stand aside. They do not want to take a leadership position in the defense of this country. That is fine. I do not think that everybody needs to participate, but get out of our way. Let us defend this country because I do not want to be one with tears in my eyes who has to look at my children or my grandchildren, or maybe even great grandchildren, if I am fortunate, when we are in the height of an international crisis where these missiles might be used and say to those generations behind me, I am sorry, I could have put a defense together. I could have done something to help you, but I walked away from it.
None of us want to walk away from that obligation. We all need to come together behind the President and help the President with these efforts to defend this country and to build a capacity that will allow or take away all of the leverage of all of the countries in the world that have a nuclear weapon and they want to use it against the United States via some type of missile.
Let me move on to the other topic that I want to discuss with you this evening. That is energy. Look, we have all heard about the State of California. We know what the problem is in California, or at least we know some of the problem. Fundamentally I think every one of our constituents understands that California is running out of power. You know, it is kind of hard to feel sorry for California. California kind of adopted the not-in-my-backyard syndrome. California has promised its citizens do not worry, we will not increase your prices on energy, which means, in essence, you do not have to conserve. California has not allowed a power generation facility to be built, an electrical-
generation facility to be built in their State for what, 10 years.
California has not allowed a natural gas transmission line to go through their State in California. In California you do not even dare talk about nuclear energy with their elected officials. There are a lot of people in California with the national Sierra Club whose number one priority is to take down the Glen Canyon Dam, one of the larger hydroelectric producers. There are people in California who are leading the effort to take down the dams in the Snake River or the Columbia River because they are trying to convince the population of California you can have it all and no risk. You can have it all and no cost. You can use as much as you want, it keeps on coming at the same price. We do not have to build electrical generation facilities in our State, because you can have it without it. We do not have to take risk and allow exploration of natural gas in our State. Do not worry about it.
In the meantime as this Titanic comes up on the iceberg, demand is going like this and supply is going like this. You cannot operate like that. You cannot operate an airplane when your airport is this far away, and your fuel consumption is going to get you this close. It does not work.
Despite the flowery promises, despite all of the hype that was given about California, we discovered something new. We have discovered for the first time in the history of the capitalistic market that we are going to be able to allow you to use all of the electricity you want, the price will be capped. We will deregulate. We will not have to take any kind of risks or suffer as a result of natural gas transmission lines or exploration because we have it all, and we will not have to do it in our own backyard. It is hard to find sympathy for the State of California. In fact, I have heard a lot of people say that is their problem.
Well, fortunately or unfortunately, I am here to tell you it is not all of California's problem. What is bad in many cases for California is bad for the United States of America. California, after all, is a State. It is a major State and it is a big player. It is a huge player in the world's economy. A huge player in the economy of the United States. It is a huge player in their educational institutions. It is a huge player in their artistic institutions in California. We have a lot of fellow citizens in California who are going to suffer lots of consequences this summer as a result of the short-sightedness of a few government officials. And, frankly, suffer as a result of adopting the concept or being convinced or swayed by the concept that you can have all of the power you want without having to have a generation facility somewhere in your State.
We cannot let California die on the vine. I am sure, colleagues, like the rest of you, I will probably go back to my office this evening and have calls from people that say let them die on the vine. California brought it on themselves, let them suffer.
It is not that simple. We need to work with California. But let us look at a few of the facts. Let me say at the very beginning that there seems to be a make-believe theory out there that if we just simply conserve, our energy crisis will be resolved. Let me tell you, that is inaccurate on its face, and it is inaccurate no matter which direction they tell you it. It does not work.
Conservation is a major contributing factor that we have to put in place immediately. In fact, you know what has put more conservation in place in the last few months than in any recent time in history? It is not the government. It is not the government that put conservation into place, it is the price of energy that has put conservation into place.
I am a good example. I will use myself. I did not turn down my thermometers a year ago in my family home. We had the temperatures in our home, I live high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and in the winter time all of our rooms were at 70 degrees. And in the summertime, our air conditioning, because we like cool air, although we have a lot of cool air, if during the day it got hot, we kept the air conditioning at 60 degrees.
It was not because some government brochure or some bureaucratic official said you do not have to have your rooms at 70 degrees, especially if you are not using them. Why not leave those rooms at 55 degrees so your pipes do not freeze when you are not using the rooms. It was not because some government brochure came and told me that, it was because we got our gas bill. I can assure you now in our household, anywhere in the house where there are not people, that temperature is at 55 degrees. We have not even started our air conditioning. We have not had it on one time, not that it is on a lot this time of year; but still for a day or two, we would have had it on. We have our fans running. We are trying to make plans for this summer, how do we conserve? Why, because the price stun us.
In California, the elected officials did not have enough guts to let the prices sting. They tried to make an artificial world out where you can continue to have as much energy as you want and not have to have your prices increased. That does not encourage conservation.
But let us say here is supply, here is demand. Conservation will go up like this. So conservation closes a gap. I brought this over, it is one of the most fascinating things that I have seen. This is where we are going with incentives in the marketplace.
A crisis drives innovation. To come up with alternative energy, this energy crisis is actually of some benefit because it will drive innovation. There are a lot of people trying to figure out how to make a better mouse trap. There are a lot of people saying we better make our air conditioning units more efficient. We can have a competitive advantage if our SUV gets better mileage.
Here is a piece of innovation here, colleagues. This is a little piece of paper. To me it looks like a little piece of tinfoil. It is laminated in a piece of plastic, and there are two wires attached to this little piece of paper. Now the person that talked to me about this little device said there is a lot of energy and movement, movement that does not have to be generated. You know to generate electricity, you have to generate movement. You do not need to generate this, this is natural movement.
{time} 2030
He said, we think we can capture energy out of waves, out of waves in the ocean. He showed me this. He gave me this. I was so fascinated by it. You will not be able to see it from there. If the lights were out in the Chambers, you would see as I go like this, the light comes on. That light is on. That movement generates energy which is put into this light. But do we have the capability today to generate any kind of significant source of power as a result of this device? No. Maybe in 15 years, maybe in 10 years, maybe we would get a real break and have stuff like this available in 10 years. But we do not have it available today. But that has not slowed down the demand out there that we have for power.
In fact, I find it interesting, one of our largest age consumption groups of power is our younger generation. That is the generation of people that some of the more radical environmental groups, for example, the National Sierra Club, has never supported a water storage project in the history of their organization. It is organizations like them out there trying to convince this younger generation, you can continue to increase your demand for power, whether it is your computer, your radio or whatever, you can continue to increase demand and yet at the same time stop supply or not allow supply to expand, or take down the dams.
``Don't worry, the hydro power will be replaced somewhere else.'' Those are fallacies. That is exactly what got California into the jam that it is in. That is exactly what is getting the rest of us. We will be sucked down that drain as well if California goes down that drain.
Let us go over some statistics that I think are important to look at. Again remember, conservation is obviously a critical element for this solution to come together, but it is not the total answer. It is only a contributing factor to the gap in the energy supply that we have today. Let us just pull up natural gas. Consumer prices for natural gas have increased 20-fold in some parts of our country over the past year. In a 1-year period of time, the demand for natural gas has gone up 20 times.
I talked to a gas analyst who went to the different companies like General Electric that make power generation facilities that are powered by natural gas. Just the orders in place exceed the natural gas supply now available in this country. Let us go on. America's demand for natural gas is expected to rise even more dramatically than oil. Why? Because natural gas is a very clean fuel to utilize. It is a very convenient fuel to utilize.
According to the Department of Energy, by 2020, we will consume 62 percent more natural gas than we do today. Right now, an estimated 40 percent of potential gas supplies in the United States are on Federal lands that are either closed to exploration or limited by severe restrictions. Even if we find supplies of gas, moving it to the market will require an additional 38,000 miles of pipeline and 255,000 miles of transmission lines at an estimated cost of 120 to $150 billion, just to move the gas. In some places we have plenty of gas, but that is not where the population is. You have got to move the gas to the population. Now remember, the numbers that I am going over are assuming that the American public exercises conservation. Even in consideration of the fact that you would conserve, these are still numbers you are going to face.
The problem of inadequate supply lines is illustrated by the Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. The site produces enough gas a day to meet 13 percent of America's daily consumption; but because a pipeline has not been built, the gas is pumped back into the ground. I might add, many of my colleagues have driven by gas wells where we now have the technology to capture the gas, and they burn it off or they burn it off because they do not have the capability to move the gas. They are looking for the oil. There are a lot of things we can do for efficiencies in this country, but we cannot do it by having our head in the sand and pretending that there is not a crisis, at least not as it applies to us and our price should not go up.
Let us move from natural gas.
Electricity. By the way, Vice President Cheney gave some great remarks here in the last couple of days. Now, of course some of the more radical environmental organizations went nuts, saying, Oh, my gosh, look at what he's demanding. He's saying that we're going to have to have I think a power plant every week for the next 20 years just to meet the demand. So what these groups are suggesting, put your head in the sand and say, It ain't so, Dick. It ain't so, Mr. Vice President.
It is so. If we are going to continue with the kind of demand that we have and remember this demand, that is not wasted power. This demand, just take a look at what the computer generation has brought onto us for demand for energy. Realistically, we are going to have to have energy in this country on an increasing production rate. So at least somebody has had enough guts to stand up and say because we have ignored this, because we have put our heads in the sand, we now have to build a bunch of power plants. We should have been building them all along.
What we need, the best energy policy and, by the way, keep in mind, the last administration had no energy policy. Our Secretary of Energy had no energy policy. Our President had no energy policy. Our Vice President had no energy policy. This new administration has come forward and a great part of the wrath that they are getting put upon them by, say, some of the environmental organizations has been brought about because this administration is saying to the American public, we need an energy policy. We need to put everything on the table.
We need to have on the table conservation, we need to have natural gas, we need to have the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. That is not to say that all of these are going to be accepted, but they have got to go on the table. And then we need to have level-headed minds from all walks of life sit down and come up with a strategy for energy for this country. That means we may add more items onto the table, or it means we may take some items off the table. But for us to prematurely eliminate sources or restrict conservation, what you do by the way with price caps, to do those kind of things does not help us develop a solid energy policy.
Let me move on to electricity. Electricity is one of our greatest challenges. As illustrated in the growing crisis in California, the Department of Energy estimates that over the next 20 years, the demand for energy in the United States will increase by 45 percent. The increasing reliance on technology has prompted our energy demands to outstrip recent projections. Some experts calculate that the demands of the Internet already consume eight to 13 percent of the electricity. If demand grows at the same pace as the last decade, we will need 1,990 new plants by 2020, or more than 90 a year just to keep pace. With conservation ideas in mind, with the current technology that we have, we are going to need to build 90 plants a year to keep pace.
What happens if you do not? Some people might say to you, Well, you know, we can all do without a little air conditioning. We can all suffer a little more. Most people that say that really mean you can suffer a little more. We do not really mean I should be the one that suffers a little more, but you can suffer a little more.
Take a look at what these rolling blackouts will do to the State of California. California is one of the largest agricultural producers in the world. Refrigeration is a basic ingredient in order to, once you pick that crop, to store that crop, to transport that crop. Take a look at the chicken farms and the turkey farms out in California. They have tens of millions of birds out there. I had a chicken farmer tell me the other day that if their circulating fans go off this summer, if they are shut down for 20 minutes, they lose their flock of birds.
Take a look at the computer chip industry that has to have refrigerated storage. Take a look at the medical industry that has to have refrigerated capacity. Take a look at the frozen foods. You all see them, those trucks that have those little boxes up on the front of the trailer and a lot of times when the truck is parked you can hear that little engine in there idling. That is refrigerating that trailer. That will not be shut off obviously because of the shutdown of a power plant in California, but those little generating facilities take fuel. My point here is electricity is very important for us. Do not think that it is just a matter of turning off the air conditioner that is going to get us out of this crisis. The only way we are going to move out of this is we have got to build additional electrical generation.
Let me continue. Hydroelectric power generation is expected to fall sharply. Today, relicensing a power plant can take decades and cost millions. Now, even though consumers are faced with blackouts and shortages, some of the activists still want to tear out dams on the Snake River.
Let us move on to our next one. Oil. It is amazing to me how negative people have turned the word oil, as if it is some evil empire out there. They think of the J.R. Ewing of Dallas days and oil. I am telling you, everything we have in our life depends on this oil. I would like to be able to go to solar. So far, despite years and years and years and billions of dollars in research, we have not made any kind of dramatic steps forward in solar. We have got some, but we have not made the kind of steps we thought we could make to replace oil.
I hope someday oil goes the same direction that whale oil went. It used to be before the discovery of oil, we used whales for oil, before the discovery of oil in the ground. Thank goodness we stopped hunting the whales because we found a replacement product. I hope through our technology we are able to find a replacement product, but the fact is we do not have it today. The hard reality of it is we are not going to have it next year. We are probably not going to have it for any number of years. So our reliance on oil, our dependency on oil is very significant and we all depend on it. Our clothes are made with oil. Our medicine is made with oil. Our vehicles, our ambulances, our fire trucks, our school buses, our personal vehicles all run on oil. The lights that we have. Members know what I am talking about. Take a look at any facet of life and tell me where oil is not needed. Any facet of life. It is fundamentally important. Until we find the replacement, we better face up to the reality that we have to meet the demand. You cannot just meet the demand through conservation alone.
Let us talk. Oil. In the next 20 years, America's demand for oil will increase by 33 percent, according to the Energy Information Institute. Yet as demand rises, domestic production drops. So the demand is going up and the domestic production in our country is going down. We have not had an inland refinery built in this country for 25 years. That is not how you answer an upswinging demand line. We now produce 39 percent less oil than we did in 1970.
Those of you my age and older, a little younger, can remember the crisis we had in the 1970s. Remember how this country committed that we would lessen our dependence on foreign oil, lessen it? It did not work. What happened is we continued to regulate, and I can tell you a lot of those regulations were good regulations. But we continued to discourage any kind of oil exploration in this country, and we depended on other countries because other countries were easier to extract it from because less regulations and safeguards, et cetera, et cetera, and we have become more dependent, not less dependent, upon it. We are down nearly 4 million barrels of oil a day. Unless our policies change, domestic production will continue to drop to 5.1 million barrels a day in 2020, down from 9.1 million barrels a day 30 years ago.
We are increasingly dependent on foreign governments for our oil. Back in 1973, we imported just 36 percent of our oil from overseas. Today, we import over 54 percent of those resources. The number of U.S. refineries has been cut in half since 1980. There has not been a new refinery built in this country in more than 25 years. Those are pretty startling statistics.
Let us go back very quickly to California and take a look at the California situation. We have just seen the nationwide situation. Let us look at California. No new natural gas lines in 8 years. They placed price caps on the rate that electricity providers could charge to the consumers while doing nothing to discourage demand.
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You continue to allow demand to go up. You do not discourage it through conservation. You do not discourage it through price. What you do is allow it to continue to go up, and you allow supply to continue to go down. When there is a cross, there is a collision. It is like two airplanes hitting in the sky. It is going to be a nasty crash. No new coal-fired plant permits in 10 years. No nuclear power plants have been built in our Nation in over 20 years. No inland refineries have been built in 26 years.
California's power capacity is down 2 percent since 1990 while demand is up 11 percent in that same period. So on one end, your supply you take it down by 2 percent. On the other end you take demand up by 11 percent and in the meantime you say to the consumer your price is capped; you do not have to worry about a price increase.
My purpose tonight is to say that this Nation needs an energy policy. It is our President, the first President now in 9 years, who has come forward and in my opinion had enough gumption to stand up, not hype, not a bunch of hype but the gumption to stand up and say maybe we ought to look at everything we are doing out here in regards to energy. Maybe, for example, we ought to look at some of the sanctions we have on oil-producing countries like Iran or some of these others. Maybe we ought to take a look and tell the people, look, we have to conserve.
Again, let me remind my colleagues, and my guess is every colleague in here has been conserving in the last few months. Why? Not because the government told them to conserve but because the price of the energy they are using has gone up tremendously. That is what is driving their conservation.
We have a President who says let us put everything on the table. Let us put conservation on the table. Let us put oil exploration on the table. Let us put ANWR, let us put transmission lines on the table, put everything on this table and then bring people to sit down at this table and let us develop an energy policy. It is an obligation, by the way, that we have; not only to ourselves but to the generation behind us and the generation ahead of us.
What do you think we are going to do? Earlier in my comments I mentioned that I said somebody said well, we turned our back on the seniors, if you do not buy their program you are turning your back on the seniors. You better talk to those seniors this summer when you have to shut off air conditioning out there in California. You better explain to those seniors out in California why you would not be a willing participant at the table in trying to come up with some kind of energy policy. You better be willing to talk to the seniors not only of California but of New York, of Oregon, of Washington, and explain to them why you did not find time to come to the table.
We have to come to this table. The President has provided the table. The President has even provided the subject of the discussion and the debate. Here are some of my ideas. Here is what I want to talk about. Now if you have a better idea, let us talk about it. Let us put it in place.
In the end, at the end of the day, the President says I need an energy policy for this country. That is good policy of its own. We, Members of this Congress, have an obligation, and I said earlier that obligation also means helping the State of California. It does not mean subsidizing the State of California. It does not mean allowing the citizens of California to continue to have their electricity or their gas or their oil at artificially low prices. What it does mean is we have to be willing to participate with California and help them get through this crisis, but California has got to step up to the plate as well. California is going to have to take a little more careful look about the not-in-my-backyard position that they have taken. California is going to have to take a little more careful look about going out to its citizens and promising them no price increases. California is going to have to take another look at not allowing refineries in their State or at least stalling the permitting process so they cannot get in there. California is going to have to take a look at not allowing a natural gas transmission line permit to go into their State or be granted in their State over such a long period of time.
This crisis, by the way, is not a crisis that is going to sink us. This is not like being in these House chambers say on December 7 or December 8 of 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, the day after Pearl Harbor. That crisis is much more severe. This is a crisis we can resolve. This is a crisis that if we bring our heads together we can do something about it, but we are going to have to change some policy. We are going to have to change the policies of the previous administration of drifting along without an energy policy. We are going to have to adopt an energy policy. We are going to have to change the policies that you do not have to have an increase in supply to meet increasing demand.
We are going to have to educate, I think, our younger generation, work with our younger generation, and prove to them that the technologies that we have for oil exploration have improved and that if they want to continue to use power at the rate they are using power we all have to join in in finding this additional supply to meet that demand.
I think in the long run, what I hope in the long run, is that 5 years from now those of us on this House Floor can look back and say that energy problem we had back in 2001, it had some good benefits to it. The American people are now smarter about their utilization of energy. They are conserving. We have more innovation on the market. We have ways, we have alternative energy that really works similar to this one right here with the light. That is what I hope 5 years from now we look back, I hope 5 years from now we can look back, and we have SUVs, for example, that get 45 or 50 miles to the gallon instead of 12 or 15 miles to the gallon.
I think we can do it, but in order for us to do it, we have to stand up on the line. We have to come out of the foxhole. Somebody has got to be the first one out of the foxhole. To that end, I give credit to the President of the United States. He has taken a lot of heat in these last 3 or 4 weeks or maybe the last 2 or 3 months. Well, he has not been in office 3 months but a couple of months, and he has taken a lot of heat because he stood up and said we need an energy policy and, God forbid, we are going to need to explore for oil; and gosh darn, sorry about this but we are going to have to have an ability to move natural gas from one end of the country to the other end of the country.
Those are tough stands to take in a society that has become pretty used to the fact that they get the energy they need without having a generation facility inside of their home or inside of their community or even within the boundaries of their State. Times are changing.
Is it not Bob Dillon that said, times are changing? That is what is happening. Times are changing in our defense strategy and times are changing in our energy strategy. We have to pay attention to defense and we have to pay attention to energy. We have to pay attention to health care. We have to pay attention to education. Times are changing, and energy is not exempt from the change of time. Energy is not exempt from continuing demand with diminishing supply. You cannot have or continue to have diminishing supply with continuing upgrade in demand without a mid-air collision.
That is exactly what happened in California, kind of. That is exactly what is going to happen in California this summer. We are going to have a mid-air collision. Maybe we can avoid it. We probably cannot.
Let me wrap up my comments here in regards to energy by saying to all of us, especially to my colleagues from California, I have been particularly harsh this evening about what has gone on in the State of California but I am not about to abandon the State of California. You are important to us. We are important to you. But it does mean you are going to have to change your habits. It does mean that you are going to have to start to conserve. It does mean that you are going to have to stand up and tell your consumers out there that they are not going to be able to enjoy artificially low prices. They are going to have to pay.
When you have disruptions in the market you do not get the product you want, and disruptions are in the market when you artificially subsidize prices. That is what has happened out there. So we want to help our colleagues from California but for the rest of us, in our States that do not face this imminent energy crisis, we better watch out because one of these days that nasty wolf will be knocking on our door. So let us learn from the lessons of California. Let us figure out conservation methods that really work. Let us figure out where in a reasonable and responsible environmental fashion we can explore for additional resources for energy. We have to do it.
Let us be frank when we talk to our constituents and let them know, hey, we have to build power plants. We are going to have to have resources to do that. You are no longer going to be able to enjoy the luxury perhaps of having every room at 70 degrees. Times, they are changing. It is going to happen to us just like it has happened in California.
Let me just summarize my earlier comments in regards to the missile defense. We have left energy now. Let me just summarize my comments. It is an inherent responsibility of every Member of Congress to provide a national defense not only for the people currently here today, our generation and maybe the one behind us, but for the future generations. It is an undeniable fact that countries will continue to accumulate nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them by missile. That is undeniable. The only way that you will be able to defend yourself against those type of horrible weapons is to have a missile shield of some type. Do not kid yourself. You are not going to be able to talk these countries out of disarming themselves. You are not going to be able, as the previous administration did or thought they could, bribe North Korea by sending them lots of oil, which by the way goes right to their military; or give them millions of dollars in foreign aid and expect these countries, on my word we are going to disassemble our nuclear weapons.
The fact is our country is going to have to disassemble nuclear weapons and any of you, by the way, who are opposed to nuclear weapons, you ought to be in support of this defensive shield. Why? There is no quicker way to make a nuclear weapon ineffective than have a shield against it. It works. We know it. You cannot disassemble a nuclear missile fast enough as you can with a missile shield once we put it in place. It makes them ineffective. That is what will break the nuclear arms race. Mark my word, that is what will break that race is the first country that is a major power that comes out with a shield that itself and their allies can use to defend themselves, that will break the nuclear arms race as we know it today in the world.
I intend to come back, I want to visit I hope later this week, certainly next week, and talk a little more about the issue of the death tax and what it has done to a lot of families in America. It looks like we are close to a tax agreement. This afternoon they have been down at the White House, Mr. Speaker, working with the administration. I hope we come together on that. I hope as we begin to put our budget together for this next year that we refrain from comments as were made in the previous speech prior to my coming up here, refrain from the comments that the administration, for example, has turned their back on the elderly or that they do not care about education or they do not care about this or they do not care about that.
They care about it. As I mentioned earlier, I think everybody on this floor, no matter how liberal their politics are, how conservative their politics are, I think everybody on this floor, everybody on this floor cares about education; they care about the elderly; they care about health care; they care about defense. I have a list a half a mile long that we care about. Let us work together as a team. I think we can do it.
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