Senate Proceeding 07-23-08 on Jul 23rd, 2008 :: 0:00:00 to 0:15:03
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George Voinovich: our wealth overseas to thise without expecting serious consequences. rather than addressing these nationalecurity concerns, we've been living the life of riley and allowed the environmental movement

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Speech By: George Voinovich

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George Voinovich: to run wild. they've gone and sued every way to sunday and all while ignored our energy, economic, and national security interests.| we let them get away with it. we let them get away with it, mr.

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George Voinovich: president, because oil is cheap, and congress felt no urnlings si -- urgency to act. oil is not cheap anymore. for 10 years i hav been on the environmental punl works committee. and for 10 years

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George Voinovich: i have tried to haonize the energy environment security. committee refused to do it and now as i predicted, the chickens have come home to roost. the americans today demand action and they demand

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George Voinovich: that we come together in a bipartisan fashion to solve this crisis. i'm glad that we have come to an agreement and move forward and debate this issue officially on the senate floor. i hope we can

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George Voinovich: continueo address a wide range of amendments that will continue to improve this bill. i didn't follow all of what our leaders just were talking about in terms of how this going to be handled. but

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George Voinovich: i want to let people know, i have been involved in the debate energy since i have been involved in the senate. the first time in 2003 w ie were on the floor six weeks and didn't get anything done. then

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George Voinovich: we came back in 2004 and spent a great deal of time and nothing happened. then we came back in 2005, the energy policy act. we spent 10 days on the floor, 19 roll calls, and 57 amendments. and i really

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George Voinovich: believe that the american people want their senators to debate this issue on the floor of the senate, gef us the right to makee amendments, let's vote them up or down,ow let's go at it and have a robust

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George Voinovich: debate. and hopefully after it is over, some consensus will come back as we did back in 2005 and 2007 so that people feelat that we have really for the first time stopped bickering and tried to

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George Voinovich: address our attention to something that is really going to make a difference in their lives. as you know, mr. president, oil is not easily found nor substituted. and it will remain an integral

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George Voinovich: component to our economy in the short run. but we must make investments today that will help us achieve our goal to tomorrow. today i believe this is -- we call it find more and use less. or to put it more

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George Voinovich: eloquent, we must increase our supply, reduc our demand through alternative energies. and we must avoid the smoke screens that cloud our path to real solutions, and ins -- i would -- some people are

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George Voinovich: saying that the specul ation bill is a smoke screen. there's legitimate debate abouteb the issue. but the fact of the matter is that's not the only issue that we should be debating. and, you know, some smart

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George Voinovich: people, robert samuelson wrote -- quote -- "speculator bashing is another exercise in scapegoating and grandstanding." another opinion piece, the hyper ventilation of oil market speculation is distracting

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George Voinovich: us from the real issues. the same issue came up with boone pickeningens. i think we -- boone pickens. i think that we can all agree this is a complicated issue with many moving parts. we have to look at

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George Voinovich: the pieces and find clueses to combat this from all angles. the bottomline, it is about supply and demand. let's talk about supply. in order to stablize our nation's supply, we must enact policies

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George Voinovich: to increase the development of domestic fuels. while these resources will not physicallyly come on line, move to expand development will send a a clear signal to the market that we're serious about meeting

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George Voinovich: our energy demands and down the cost of oil. investors will know that gas will not be as much in the future and will sell it off today lowering the cost. we have more energy resources than any

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George Voinovich: other area in the world. i chaired a committee a couple of weeks ago. and it just was amazing to me. they showed a chart. we have more oil reserves than any other place in the world. and most of

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George Voinovich: that is out withit the shale oil out in the western part of the united states.d some say it's too expensive too get, over $100. we're not sure yet. boone pickens when he testified before our committee

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George Voinovich: said, in 10 years if we don't do something, the cost of oil could be $300 a barrel. so the fact of the matter is we've got to understand that the majority of our oil resources are locked up. 85% of our

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George Voinovich: offshore acreage and 65% of our onshore acreage is off the table. and it's really interesting. i've been using this and saying that if the president guess over to see king abdullah and says, give

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George Voinovich: me some more oil and i said the king should say, why should i give you my oil because the -- the supply isth almost the same as the demand. the demand is growing. and why don't you go home, mr.e,

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George Voinovich: president, and use the oil that you have in the united states of america? why don't you do the continental shelf? why don't you move east in the gulf of mexico. you have rigs down there righthe now.

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George Voinovich: you have 4,000 of them during katrin a. and there wasn't any oil spill during that period of time. i understand you've got some shale oil out in the west, 800 billion barrels of oil that's available

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George Voinovich: and perhaps even twoev trillion in terms of reserves. you have lots of coal. and you y could use coalse to create oil. you've got some friends up in canada that have 185 billion barrels of oil in the

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George Voinovich: tar sands and someone in your congress has made it improbable -- almost impossible to bring the tar sands down from canada who are your friends, your neighbors, share your same values, andva it's

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George Voinovich: interesting when we talked to pickens about this issue, pickens said, when i was in saudi arabia and i talked to these guys, you know what they said to me? go after your own oil. once our oil is

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George Voinovich: gone, that's a great resource. so you go after yours. and so in a nutshell, i think that we need to go on and do the very best that we can in an environmentally sound way to get at the oil that o

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George Voinovich: we have available to us as a country. you know, i k was justas thinking about this that in 10 years if we really had the shale oil out in the west and it proved to be what everyone says it canan be, instead

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George Voinovich: of us being at the bottom of the barrel, we would be at the top of the barrel. we might not have to use it. we would beou able to look out and say, y ou know what k folks, we've got a lot of oil

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George Voinovich: here. what you did to us, we could do to you if we wanted to. that's not the realat answer. the real answer is that i call it the second declaration of independence. and the second tech what ration of

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George Voinovich: -- declaration of independenceen says, you knowou what, we're going to be oil independent. tell our kids and grandchildren, we're going to be oil independent and we're going to do this like president

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George Voinovich: kennedy did, you remember the russians sent put nick up -- sputnik up, bam. we didn't lik e it. president kennedy said to the people, we're going to get this done in 10 years and by golly, we saw a

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George Voinovich: man from ohio land on the moon. and i know this, we have really wonderful, smart s people in this country. and if we are willing to put -- one of the ideas that i have in terms of an amendment

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George Voinovich: would be if we did the exploration or we lifted the moratorium on thehe outer shelf exploration,ra that what we would do is take the lease money and put it intoo the research that we're going t to

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George Voinovich: have to do on battery, which i think ultimately are the ones, because you don't need to have an infrastructure with fuel cells, even with boone pickens oil or natural gas, you've got to have a pump there.

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George Voinovich: with a plug-in vehicle, all you do is you come home at h night, stick it in the -- in the plug and you're all sivment don't have to worry about whether the gas station's going to have some pump

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George Voinovich: there to take care of it. but the fact of the matter is we need more money to do this. the department of energy has good programs on the way. but you know what? they tonight have the money ta telecommunication

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George Voinovich: care itun of -- the money to take care of it. we say to the american people, we have $9 billion on b leases. that's a lot o f money. we'll say, we'll let you explore there and you're going to pay us

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George Voinovich: for these leases, and by the way, we're going to take that money and put it in so we can become oil independent in this country. that sounds s probably, you know, maybe, you know, idealistic. but

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George Voinovich: the fact of the matter we have to do something creative around here. we know we don't have a whole lot of money. we've got -- our national debt is $9.4 trillion the but somehow we've got to come together

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George Voinovich: and say, we're going to do two things. weefer going to -- we're going to go after what we have available to us. and we're going to do everything we can to be independent from -- from relying upon

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George Voinovich: foreign sources of oil. that we -- we recognize that this is not just a problem of high-gasoline costs. this is a problem about the national security of the united states of america. this is more

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George Voinovich: than just, well, $4 a gallon. this is a situation that two years ago, i went over to that national defense, and they had war games. i walked out of there, and i was really concerned. -- concerned

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George Voinovich: about what would happen to our country if someone decided to shut off our oil. the problem today is that if you look at the demand for oil and the supply, it's about equal. that's what boone pickens

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George Voinovich: said in his testimony. that we have -- the supply is about where w the demand is and the demand is going up and the supply isn't there so one of the things that we have to do, i think as a country,

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George Voinovich: is let's do more with our own. let's find more. and tell the american people, it's not going to happen overnight, but we're going to do this so that down the road we're not to be at someone's beckon call

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George Voinovich: or at theirhe mercy. in addition to this, it will stop us from sending money overseas to countries that don't like us. i mean, can you imagine that we get 11% of our oil from venezuela and chavez down

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George Voinovich: there is talking about cutting off the c oil and trying to get the south american countries to all organize against the united states of america? this is a big deal. and so, mr. president, it's finding

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George Voinovich: more, using less and it's also doing everything that we can do for conservation. and i just, real quickly, these are simple things. i have a -- a -- i have a -- a 2000 ford station wagon. and it's

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George Voinovich: got a little dial on there that i can tell how many miles i get per gallon. i've got to tell you in the last six months i've been paying a lot more attention to that. i found that if i drive at

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George Voinovich: 57 miles per hour, i can get two or three more miles per gallon. i don't get there as fast. my daughter, betsy, you know, every time she needed something, she jumped in the car and went out and got.

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George Voinovich: it now she sea makes a big list of things and they go out once. my son peter, works 10 hours a day for four days. there are things that we as americans can do to cut back on the amount of oil that

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George Voinovich: we're now using. so it's -- i think it's past time that we now work together in a bipartisan fashion to harmonize our energy, our environmental needs, our economy and national security. can i imagine, mr. president

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George Voinovich: how the american people would rejoice if they saw republicans ca and democrats come together and say we're going to work this out on your behalf for the american people? i mean our numbers are pretty

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George Voinovich: bad and can i tell you and i'm sure the -- i can tell you and i'm sure the president understands -- i'm outut in ohio all the time. and you know what i hear from people? why can't you stop the bickering?

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George Voinovich: why are you so -- are you so much more interested in partisan politics? and some have heard me say this before. but i was the mayor of cleveland with 21 democrats. i had the most powerful democratic leader they

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George Voinovich: ever had in the city and we decided to work together on a bipartisan basis. i go down to columbus as the governor of ohio, the most powerful speaker in the history of ohio, vernal rife. they built a building

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George Voinovich: with his name on. they had a bus stop up there. a very powerfulfu guy. we decided, let's work together. let's not talk about our differences. let's find the things that bring us together. let's go to the environmental

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George Voinovich: groups. oulet's go to the people interested in the economy. let's go to the people that are interested in energy. let's go to the people that are interested in our national security and say, you

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George Voinovich: know what, we have a relationship. you environmentalists, you people over here, let's work together. let's do something special. let's restore people's faith in our system and that we are capable, republicans

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Hillary Clinton: an democrats, americans, to -- and democrats, americans, to come together and do something significant for not only ourselves today, but, more important, for my children and, morere important, that

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Speech By: Hillary Clinton