Lynn A. Westmoreland: “Thank you, sir. You know, I want to just show the American people: We're not going to immediately drill ourselves out of…”

“Thank you, sir. You know, I want to just show the American people: We're not going to immediately drill ourselves out of the spot, Mr. Speaker. But in 1995, the Congress passed drilling in ANWR. President Clinton vetoed it. Had he not vetoed it in 1995 we would be getting one million barrels of oil today out of ANWR. So is this an immediate relief? No. It's immediate relief from, I think, the speculation and the amount of escrowing. But this is an all-of-the-above issue. We've got to start drilling. We've got to start doing alternative fuels. We've got to build refineries. We've got to be doing onshore and offshore drilling. We've got to do coal-to-liquid. There are a lot of things we have to do and not just lay here in a fetal position. But this is what really burns me up when I think about being dependent on foreign oil. This is a picture of Mr. Chavez from Venezuela and Mr. Castro from Cuba. In a recent interview on al Jazeera, Chavez called for developing nations to unite against U.S. political and economic policies. "What We Can Do Regarding the Imperialistic Power of the United States." "We have no choice but to unite," he said. "Venezuela's energy alliances with nations such as Cuba, which receives cheap oil and are an example of how we use oil in our war against neo liberalism," he said. If you saw it on TV this morning, you saw where he threatened the European nations with no more Venezuelan oil because they passed an immigration law that he didn't like.”