Phil Gingrey: “I wanted to, first off, say that I am a very proud cosponsor of the legislation introduced by Mr. Hensarling from Texas…”

“I wanted to, first off, say that I am a very proud cosponsor of the legislation introduced by Mr. Hensarling from Texas and by Mr. Conaway also from Texas, H.R. 5656, which he referred to at the outset of this hour. I want to talk specifically about that particular bill because it's so important, but before I get into the discussion about 5656, I want to make sure that we put it into perspective in regard to the discussion tonight. We first heard from our colleague from North Carolina, Ms. Foxx, who was talking for 5 minutes about the issue of supply and demand. She was saying that that is a basic economic principle, and I think we all know that. As she pointed out, Mr. Speaker, our Democratic colleagues cannot legislate away the basic principle of supply and demand. So what we're talking about and will talk about during this hour is, I guess, the opportunity lost if we continue this folly of not going after petroleum products in our own country. We call it and we refer to it, of course, as domestic production. A lot of the focus is on ANWR-- that frozen tundra on the North Slope of Alaska, that very small area where we know, as the geologists have already told us, there are something like 10 billion barrels of petroleum. At full production, we would be producing 1.5 million barrels of additional domestic oil every day from that one source.”