There is a tremendous amount of money, Mr. Chairman, being invested by companies. There is oil and gas in the ground.

The Lease Act fairly restores time lost as a result of the offshore moratoria by extending the impacted leases by 1 year.

It used to be, basically, you submitted your permit and within 30 or 60 days, you got a yes or a no.

We may be at high levels today, but we are not going up. We are going down.

I want to associate myself with the remarks of Senator Hutchison. I am proud to cosponsor the Lease Act with her.

By passing this legislation, we will ensure that all moratorium-impacted leases are extended.

But the bottom line is we need to step it up, or these numbers are going to get worse, not better.

I want to clear for the record that--and this is from the EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook--this is not Mary Landrieu's chart.

There is not a new deepwater permit. Is that correct?

Because I did not want the public to know what I had done -- very simple.

Mr. Speaker, I came down here to do a public service announcement. On behalf of all Americans, I want the Republican majority to know that the elections are over. You've won the majority for now, so now start governing and stop…

I thank the Senator. I wish to ask the Senator a final point. We are going to hear tomorrow speeches given about America is at the highest production levels ever. That may be true. But it is true for a very short period of time--maybe the…

I say to the Senator, because he raises an excellent point, President Obama is not the first President to go overseas and ask them to produce more oil to send it to us. This goes on--President Clinton did it. President Bush did it. We beg…

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Alaska for asking me to join him in a general presentation and potential colloquy between the two of us about the importance of continuing our support for oil and gas production in the United States…

Questions Submitted by Senator Mary L. Landrieu

Mr. Chairman, I will conclude by saying this: If you go throughout south Louisiana and you see the 13,000 jobs that we have lost; you talk to families who are hanging on by a vine; you talk to small business owners who barely can make ends…

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate my colleague yielding to talk about this important legislation; because, Mr. Chairman, as I just got back home from New Orleans over the weekend, of course people all throughout the gulf coast, people all…

I thank the gentleman for allowing me to speak on this important issue, H.R. 1229. Mr. Chairman, as you know, it is one of a trifecta of bills that we're passing out of the House, once and for all and after 40 years, to begin actually…