The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“FAA REAUTHORIZATION ACT” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the Senate section on pages S9863-S9866 on Sept. 25, 2009.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
FAA REAUTHORIZATION ACT
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, last evening the Senate passed a 3-month extension--until December 31--of the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill, and I wanted to mention a word about that.
The 3-month extension is necessary because the authorization ends at the end of this month, September 30. This is such an important issue, so I hope we are able to find time on the floor of the Senate--I have talked to the majority leader, Senator Reid, about finding time on the floor to consider the FAA reauthorization bill, which includes important provisions to modernize our air traffic control system.
Let me talk about the process for getting a bill considered on the floor just for a moment. It has been difficult here to get things done on the floor of the Senate. Sometimes we have had cooperation, sometimes not. Sometimes on very noncontroversial things we have had to file cloture just on the motion to proceed. It takes 2 days to get cloture, have a vote on cloture, and then the minority has insisted on 30 hours postcloture. So you have to take the better part of a week just to get to a piece of legislation, even the noncontroversial ones. So my hope would be that perhaps we could get more cooperation particularly when it comes to passing the FAA Reauthorization Act.
The FAA Reauthorization Act is critically important because we need to modernize the air traffic control system. I chair the Aviation Subcommittee, and that is why I wish to bring this bill to the floor, along with my colleague, Senator Rockefeller, and move rather rapidly on the issue of modernization of the air traffic control system.
We are still flying using ground-based radar systems that have been around for a long time. Previously, I described on the floor of the Senate that when flying began in this country and we started to haul mail by airplanes, planes could only fly during the day when the pilot could see. Then eventually they began flying at night by building big bonfires 50 or 100 miles out so the pilot could see the direction they were supposed to head. Then, with more sophistication, we developed ground-based radar and we put transponders in an airplane which send signals to a radar on the ground, and that radar then puts a little signal on a screen that says: Here is where the airplane is. Well, that is all fine, except in most cases it's actually: This is where the airplane was. Because for the next 7 seconds that jet is elsewhere. It is moving. So you have a single dot on a ground-based radar system, and the transponder says, here is where that jet airplane is, but it is really not there anymore. It is there for just a nanosecond, and during the rest of the sweep of the radar that airplane is somewhere else.
We need to go to an entirely new system. Europe and the United States are both moving to a system that uses GPS so that we know exactly where that airplane is. It is a much more effective system and a safer system. It will save energy. It will allow airlines to fly more direct routes, so it will save time for passengers. It will be better for the environment because planes will be using less energy. All of that is true. But we can't get there until we pass the provisions that move the FAA forward with modernization that are part of the FAA reauthorization bill.
I and others have worked on this for a long time. We extended the existing reauthorization last evening until the end of the year, but between now and then we need to pass the reauthorization bill through the Senate so that we can conference it with the House and get a bill to the President.
It also includes provisions dealing with safety. For example, I have chaired two hearings on the tragic accident in Buffalo, NY, with the Colgan Air flight in which many lives were lost. We have included in this legislation issues dealing with the FAA and the issues of pilot fatigue, crew rest, pilot training, and other issues dealing with safety that are very important.
We also include the Passengers' Bill of Rights, which some of my colleagues have worked on for a long while. I included that in the mark that has now passed the Commerce Committee. It includes, for example, one little piece in the Passengers' Bill of Rights says that if you are on an airplane and you are stranded someplace on a tarmac, they can't keep you more than 3 hours without being required to take you back to the terminal. We have had examples--tragic examples, I should say--of people being stuck on an airplane for way too many hours and not allowed to come back to the terminal. Well, we put a provision in here dealing with that which relates to the Passengers' Bill of Rights.
My point is this: This is important to passengers, it is important to the airlines, and it is important to our country to get this done and get it done right. My fervent hope is that we will get time on the schedule and get it through the Senate so that we can get it to conference with the House of Representatives and see if we can get done what should have been done 2 years ago. It is called the Air Traffic Control Modernization Program. It is part of the FAA Reauthorization Act, and it is very important for this country.
Energy
Mr. President, I want to talk just for a moment about energy. I know we have been spending a lot of time dealing with health care. I believe the Finance Committee is meeting and working on a health care bill, as we speak, and that is important to continue that work. Another important issue for the Senate to address is energy. I want to talk just for a moment about the need for an expanded energy program in this country and a new set of energy policies. Just as we have reported an FAA reauthorization bill, we have also reported a bill out of the Senate Energy Committee. I worked with Senator Bingaman and others on a bipartisan bill, and we have reported a very important bill out of the Energy Committee which is now on the Senate calendar. If we can pass it in the Senate and House, resolve the differences, and have the President sign it, this legislation can move us in the direction toward addressing the climate change. But it also makes us less dependent upon foreign energy, thus improving our energy and our national security situation.
Here are the issues. We produce millions of barrels of oil every single day by sucking it out of our planet. We stick little straws in the dirt, and we suck oil out at a rate of about 85 million barrels a day. Think about a globe in your office or someplace at school and look at where we are relative to the size of the planet. Even though we produce 85 million barrels a day for the world, one-fourth of it comes to this patch called the United States of America. We use one-fourth of all the oil that is sucked out of our planet every single day, so we have a prodigious appetite for energy.
That is not surprising. Everything we do uses energy, and we are an advanced industrial country. We get up in the morning and turn on a switch and the light goes on. We plug in an electric razor and shave. We use it for the coffee maker or for the toaster by using electricity. We open the refrigerator which keeps the food cool all the time. We get in our cars, put a key in the ignition and ignite an engine with probably 250 horses to take us to work or to get a doughnut and coffee. We are unbelievable users of energy, and we do not even think much about it. But if tomorrow morning we awoke and none of that energy were available, our lives would change in a dramatic way.
Now think of this: Although we need one-fourth of 85 million barrels of oil today, brought to this country, almost 70 percent of the oil we use is produced elsewhere. Some of it is produced in countries that do not like us very much. Then in addition to nearly 70 percent being produced elsewhere, about 70 percent of the oil in this country is used in the transportation sector. So those are the elements of things that ought to concern us. How do we deal with all of this?
What we need to do is produce more energy at home. We also need to produce different kinds of energy. I happen to believe we ought to produce virtually every kind of energy to the extent that we can do so, and do it with an eye and understanding on how that impacts climate change issues. We should be attending to and producing more renewable energy--including wind, solar, biomass and other renewable resources. Developing renewables will move us in the direction of addressing climate change.
So here is what we have done in the Energy Committee. We have produced a piece of legislation that maximizes the use of renewable energy.
Here is a picture of wind turbines. They are plentiful in my State and in many other States as well. We are taking energy from the wind and producing electricity. When we put up a turbine, it can blow for 10 years, 20 years or 50 years so that we are getting energy from the wind. It is renewable, increasingly reliable, carbon free, and very protective of the environment.
By producing electricity from the wind, solar or biomass resources, we are capable of extending and expanding our energy supply and in many ways, making us less dependent on foreign oil or energy that comes from foreign sources. This is especially true as we work to electrify our transportation system.
One of the things we did with respect to wind energy is, for the first time in the Senate Energy bill, establish a national renewable electricity standard. We said we believe there ought to be a requirement of how much of our nation's electricity should come from renewable energy. So we have a 15-percent requirement. When we get a bill to the Senate floor, we ought to increase it to a 20-percent requirement where 5 percent is for energy efficiency and 15 percent is for renewable energy. I would like to see if we can strengthen that standard which came out of the Energy Committee. But at least the first renewable electricity standard of 15 percent is in the committee passed bill. It is very important that we a starting point for where we want to be.
There is this old saying: If you don't care where you are, you are never lost. That is very true for public policy in this country. If you don't care where you are, then you don't set goals. But we should set goals because we are unbelievably and dangerously dependent on energy from other countries. That doesn't make any sense to me, so we must maximize the production of renewable energy.
The problem is where the Sun shines or where the wind blows and where we can produce electricity from the wind and the Sun may not necessarily be where we most need the energy. What we need to do is produce energy where we can and move it to the load centers where they need the electricity. So we have a transmission piece in this energy legislation which is very important because it essentially will create an interstate highway of transmission capability to maximize the production of renewable energy and move it to where it is needed, the load centers.
We cannot seem to produce or build transmission capabilities at this point to the scale we need it. We have--we built 11,000 miles of natural gas pipelines in the last 9 years in this country to move natural gas, but we have only been able to build 668 miles of interstate, high voltage transmission lines. We just can't get it done. There are 100 different ways for people to say no. We put a transmission piece in this legislation which will move us down the road to maximize the production and the movement of renewable energy. This is a positive step for this country.
Here is a chart that describes what has happened with domestic production and use of petroleum in our country from 1981 to today. It is pretty clear from this graph what has happened, and this ever growing gap is what makes us dangerously dependent on foreign oil. We use a lot of oil, and we are unbelievably dependent on foreign oil. As I indicated, some of it is from countries that don't like us very much, and that is not smart at all.
The Energy bill passed in the Energy Committee awaiting floor action is legislation that contains an amendment I successfully offered that would open access to the eastern gulf of Mexico which is closed for oil and gas production. It would open it for oil and gas production. That is very important because there are substantial amounts of production available to us in this region.
Down in the Cuban waters we have this misguided embargo against Cuba for the last 50 years that has not worked. It continues, and at the same time, the Cubans are opening their waters for oil and gas production to companies based in other countries. We understand there is about a half million barrels a day for production available in these waters. The Spanish are there, the Indians are there, Canada is there--
they are all seeking to develop the resources, but American oil companies can't because of that embargo. That makes no sense to me, and we ought to remove that embargo, in my judgment. But the point is, the bill I have just described actually opens a substantial area for additional oil and gas production that came from an amendment passed with bipartisan support.
Here is another chart describing where we get our energy. It includes coal, petroleum, natural gas, hydroelectric, renewables, and nuclear. I happen to think to the extent that we can, even as we take action to protect our environment, we ought to consider all types of energy to make us less dependent on foreign energy.
Coal--I recognize, by using coal to produce energy, we release carbon into the atmosphere. That is difficult when we are dealing with a need to address climate change. In the appropriations committee I chair on energy and water, what we are doing is making sure we are investing in finding ways to remove the carbon from fossil energy. I believe it can be done. I believe one day we will have a near-zero emission, coal-
fired, electric-generating plant.
I think we ought to do a lot of everything and do it well. I believe there are so many exciting things going on that will alter our future, if we just keep investing in them and make them happen.
I want to show a chart that is kind of a Byzantine chart, actually. This might not mean much to anybody at first glance, but this is algae. It is single-cell pond scum. We have all seen in very common places, especially those of us who grew up in rural areas. In a pond when the Sun shines we will see this film develop, this green slimy stuff in a pond. It is pond scum, right? Algae.
When I became chairman of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, I restarted the algae research work that had been discontinued for 15 years. Why would we research algae? Here is why: Because if CO2 is a problem in coal-burning or fossil-fired plants, what we can do with it is take the CO2 from the facility and feed it into a big old greenhouse. We can grow algae because algae grows with sunlight, water, and CO2. We get rid of the CO2 by feeding it into and growing the algae, then harvesting the algae and producing a diesel fuel. We take the CO2, which is a problem because we want to protect the atmosphere.
There is research going on right now in which I believe Exxon and Dr. Craig Venter are working on for new algae research. They are taking the algae and excreting the lipids which, with little manipulation, would then become petroleum projects. Dr. Venter was also one of several leading scientists involved in the research to map the human genome which gave us the first owners manual for the human body. Dr. Venter and Dr. Francis Collins are remarkable Americans. He is now doing research in which people are trying to determine how to create synthetic microbes that would consume coal and, in the process of consuming coal, leave methane gas behind.
Isn't that interesting? Isn't it something, if we could have synthetic microbes turn coal into gas by consuming the coal? I don't know what the future holds for all of this. I do know this. The Energy bill we have passed in our Energy Committee builds on a lot of these interesting and important ideas, and I believe does it well. While I haven't mentioned nuclear, there are loan guarantee funds and other incentives that Congress has already passed to try to build some of the first few nuclear projects, which obviously don't produce carbon.
I think it is important that we recognize we should do a lot of things, do them well, make us less dependent on foreign oil, protect the environment, and provide greater national security and energy security as a result. That is the point of it all.
The reason I have described all this--I come from a State that produces a lot of energy and I am on the Energy Committee. I am the second ranking Democrat on the committee. I am also chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds all energy and water projects, and that is a great opportunity for me because I come from a State that produces a lot of energy. We have virtually every form of energy. In the western half of that State, we produce a lot of oil and natural gas. We produce a lot of coal. We also have a great deal of wind and biomass. In fact we have more wind than any State in America. According to the Department of Energy, we are the Saudi Arabia of wind.
Also, we have a plant that uses lignite coal and produces from lignite coal synthetic natural gas. It is the only plant of its kind in the United States. We take CO2 from that facility, put it in a pipeline to inject into the oil fields in Canada. We are taking CO2, sequestering it, selling it, using it in enhanced oil recovery because a very small amount of oil a new oil field is actually brought up until we use additional means to move it. We can do that by injecting it with CO2 which stays in the ground. Then we can bring up a lot more oil. We are doing all these things.
The reason I wanted to talk about this today is we need to get that Energy bill to the floor of the Senate, get it passed, get it to the President for signature. It is a significant first step in the direction of addressing climate change but is also a significant step in making us less dependent on foreign oil.
Senator Bingaman and Senator Murkowski, the chairman and ranking member of the Energy Committee, worked with me and other Members for many months to produce this legislation. Some say let's merge it with climate change.
We should put this energy bill and climate change together and bring it to the floor for a debate. Well, you know what. I have said I think it would be far more beneficial, as a matter of practical policy, to bring the Energy bill to the Senate floor, pass it, put that progress in the bank because it is a significant stride toward addressing climate change, then follow that up with a climate change bill behind that.
I know some have interpreted my remarks as saying I do not support climate change legislation. Well, I have already spoken on the floor to clarify that point. I do not support a cap-and-trade bill as it relates to the market trade portion of cap and trade.
I do not intend and do not have any interest in consigning the price of energy tomorrow to the decisions in a $1 trillion carbon securities market that will be populated by investment banks and speculators today that are going to tell us what they believe the price of carbon should be tomorrow.
I have had way too much acquaintance with markets that are broken and markets that do not work in recent years to believe that is what we ought to do. I do believe there is something significant happening with respect to our climate changing. I believe this country should take, at a minimum, a series of important ``no regret'' steps in addressing those issues.
But I have great difficulty with those who believe we should do cap-
and-trade bill when you talk about carbon marking trading, given the experience we have had in recent years in other markets. We have discovered that time on the Senate floor is evaporating quickly because health care is taking longer than one would have expected.
We must also do financial reform. I would hope that financial reforms come after health care. My own view is we do financial reform first this year because that would have established the foundation by which people could have confidence in the system that steered this country's economy into the ditch. I have expressed this to the President.
But I understand health care is a very serious problem as well. So we need to consider health care and financial reform. I also hope we can consider the issue of FAA reauthorization; all these things and others are needed to be done before the end of the year. The majority leader understands all of that, is working very hard to try to fit the pieces of that puzzle into the time available.
My only point for expressing the point on the floor is that I would very much hate to lose some important work on energy that affects virtually every form of energy, including energy efficiency, the first ever national RES, more transmission, additional access to oil, and more that will make us less dependent on foreign oil and start to address climate change.
All of that is part of a plan that I think is a plan that will advance the interests of this country. So my hope is that in the coming weeks, as we think through and talk through what should be our agenda in the near future, my hope is we can find a way to move these important parts of an energy bill.
This, I think, should represent a significant opportunity for bipartisanship at a time when there has been precious little. Too little bipartisanship exists right now. But if there is any area in which most of us would believe our country's best interests reside, it has to be producing more energy and doing it the right way, protecting our environment at the same time. That is very much what this Energy bill strives to do.
It will advance our country's interests, and so my hope is that when the calendar turns for the new year, we will have sent to the President's desk an energy policy that has a lot to commend in it for this country's future. I visited personally with the President, the Majority Leader and others about this idea and commit to working with them on it.
I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kaufman). The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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