Now it seems the Federal Government has to pay you to remove timber from the public lands.

And frankly, I would challenge the Republican majority in the House to bring that to a halt.

Only in America will you have the government that pays, that actually gives grant money to environmental groups, and these same environmental groups sue the government.

We're told that there isn't enough money for forest thinning, and yet we used to have no problems keeping our forests thinned and healthy when we sold commercially viable timber.

But pardon me, but the oil companies make money by producing lots of oil. They produce lots of oil because they go out and look for it and they find it.

I mean, can people honestly say that our Nation is more energy-independent today than it was four years ago? I think not.

This Administration has sharply reduced the acreage available for offshore leasing. It has increased the length of the regulatory process.

If we had confined our development to areas of known reserves back in those days, we would have run out of oil.

When this Administration took office, this industry was poised to produce more American energy than we had at any time in our past.

Because that is about the only area that you are allowing American enterprise to develop. And that is an outrage.

You have to hide the actual cost of this from consumers, and at the same time, you have to artificially increase the price of conventional electricity supplies that are vastly less expensive.

This is a battle of two very different visions.