Dan Burton: “just a little while ago, we voted to suspend the acquisition of petroleum for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and for…”

“just a little while ago, we voted to suspend the acquisition of petroleum for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and for other purposes, a bill, H.R. 6022, which is going to take about 70,000 barrels of oil a day that would be going into the petroleum reserve and put it into the market for Americans to use in gasoline and other products. It sounded very good and I voted for it because it is one small step, if you can call it a small step, in the right direction, but it's really not going to solve the problem. The problem we have is that the United States is not energy independent. We have been talking about energy independence for the last 35 to 40 years, and we haven't done anything about it. This House, and primarily the Democrat party, is being held hostage by the environmental lobby that won't allow us to drill in places like the ANWR in Alaska. Alaska is three-and-a-half times the size of Texas. It's huge. I've been up to Alaska. Drilling up there in the ANWR isn't going to hurt anybody or anything. And I cannot understand why we can't get 1 million to 2 million barrels of oil a day out of there that would help the American people see the price of their gasoline and other fuel products reduced dramatically.”