Mr. President, I rise today to talk candidly about rising gasoline prices and what we can do about them. I have been deeply concerned about our reliance on foreign oil and the rising cost of energy for several years. That was one of the reasons I gave up my post as Chairman of the Budget Committee to become Chairman of the Energy Committee. I saw energy dependence and rising energy prices as a big problem for this country and I wanted to help solve it.

Last year, we passed the bipartisan Energy Policy Act of 2005. It was the first comprehensive energy bill in 12 years and it took Republicans and Democrats five years and a lot of hard work to get this bill passed. It’s an excellent bill and one I am proud of. This bill fixed a lot of our energy problems and in a year or two, it will fix a lot more.

Let me highlight a couple of remarkable we accomplished with our energy bill.

• We create a pilot program in seven western states to streamline the permitting process so oil and developers won’t have to wait years to develop their leases. 

• We require eight billion gallons of ethanol be included in gasoline by 2012. This provision will help ethanol displace 2 billion barrels of foreign oil over the next six years.

• We provide several incentives for new nuclear energy that have prompted nine utilities and consortium to plan as 19 new nuclear power plants.

• The bill encourages energy from wind, solar and geothermal sources. Our incentives will bring  more than 14,000 MW of wind energy could be online by the end of  next year -- which is enough energy to power roughly five million homes for one year.

But oil and gasoline prices continued to climb after the energy bill was passed into law. A lot of that was due to hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

• We still have two refineries down because of the storm. That accounts for 5 percent of our refining capacity.

• We have also lost about 1.5 million barrels of oil per day because of damaged oil rigs – that’s a whopping 22 percent of our domestic production.

Global unrest and rising global demand have also driven up prices. Oil is a global commodity. Problems in producing nations like Venezuela, Nigeria and Iran have sharply driven up oil prices in recent weeks. Continued growing demand from countries like China and India have kept supplies and contributed to rising prices.

A little of this we can do something about. Most of it we can’t do much about unless we either wean ourselves off foreign oil – which will take several years to do – or dramatically increase our own production of oil, which Democrats in the House and Senate refuse to do.

Let’s talk about what we can do. President Bush proposed four things yesterday. I endorse every one of them.   

He wants an aggressive investigation of fraud and manipulation. We mandated a similar investigation in the energy bill. I absolutely support the President’s call for an ongoing investigation into manipulation or cheating.

He wants to repeal certain tax breaks in the energy bill he says are unnecessary for oil companies. I agree! I’m prepared to lead efforts to do just that. I am happy to help repeal tax breaks for development of oil in foreign countries. I support his call to eliminate funding for research into deep water drilling. I have said consistently in recent days that I cannot support the concept of tax breaks for oil companies while some American families are searching their budgets for the extra cash they need to fill their gas tanks.

The President has announced that he will temporarily halt the fill of SPRO – a move I hope will free up about two million barrels of oil this summer. 

If we had developed ANWR 10 years ago, when Congress passed ANWR legislation, we could be getting as much as 1 million barrels of oil a day from that region. But President Clinton vetoed that bill and congressional Democrats backed him. How much oil have we been losing out on for 10 years? Well, the estimated reserves in ANWR could replace what we import from Iran.

I stand here today and tell you that many of the Democrats who have come down to the floor for the past two days to blame the President and Republicans for our energy prices, are the same Democrats who have fought against the one thing they know will make a real impact on oil prices – increasing our own production.

These senators understand that today’s gasoline prices are driven by increasingly long-term speculation on global production. They understand that a strong signal on supply can drive prices up today and down tomorrow. They know that a vote to develop ANWR will have an immediate impact on oil prices, which in turn, will have an immediate impact on gasoline prices.

Just look at what happened to the energy markets yesterday after the President announced his four-prong plan. Energy prices fell.

Yet, these same senators fought again ANWR, fought against OCS production and have consistently fought against new energy production almost anywhere – production they know will ease our price and supply problems.

I have marked up a Lease Sale 181 bill that will develop oil and gas 100 miles off our coast. Democrats have threatened to filibuster the bill when it comes to the floor.
 
The Massachusetts delegation continues to block the Weaver Cove LNG facility – a facility proposed for Fall River that would provide 400,000 mcf of natural gas per day. That’s enough natural gas to ease price and supply pressure for most of New England.

Instead, they propose a gasoline tax holiday. I find it interesting that it is Democrats who want to temporarily repeal the gasoline taxes since it was Democrats who have voted over the years to increase those same taxes.

Well, I can support that idea. I like the idea of helping American families keeping some of that money they are spending at the gas pump these days. But we use that money to build roads and mass transit. The federal government is going to have to make those revenues up somewhere. So let me propose this idea: Let’s let oil companies make up the difference.

Let’s open up ANWR and use the revenue from the bonus lease sales to make up the revenue we’re helping consumer keep. I think it makes sense. Democrats are blaming oil companies for the rising gasoline prices. Let’s make them pay – and at the same time, let’s produce enough of our own energy to ease gas prices at American pumps regardless of what happens in Iran, Venezuela or Nigeria.

I say let’s marry the tax break Democrats want with the real solution – environmentally responsible energy development. That way, Democrats get their quick, brief tax break and Republicans get the opportunity to finish the rest of President Bush’s national energy policy by providing the sound energy production that we have been saying for years is absolutely necessary to ease supply and demand constraints in the face of rising global demand.

We did what was politically possible with the energy bill last year. And make no mistake, that bill was very significant. But we knew there was more to do. We knew that we had to increase our domestic energy production. That’s why I continued to work on ANWR this year. That’s why I introduced and marked up in committee my Lease Sale 181 bill.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, let’s finish the job now. Let’s work together to give the American people a complete national energy policy that includes the responsible production we need to keep energy prices low for the coming years while we develop the leading-edge technologies and fuels that will move us away from foreign oil forever.