On the recordJanuary 17, 2012
In 36 days, the President will have an opportunity to do a great thing for America. He'll have an opportunity to allow private industry with private funds to build a pipeline to carry petroleum all across the country to lower the price for consumers driving their cars, for manufacturers who use these products, and to do so in a way that is environmentally friendly. It is indeed my hope that the President will take this opportunity to do just that. Today we've got oil at over $100 a barrel. It was not all that long ago in the history of our country that we stared at North American energy production and wondered: Will we have enough natural gas, will we have enough oil here domestically so that we don't have to depend on the Middle East? I remember when I was much younger sitting in a car with lines of cars waiting to get gasoline. We could only get gas on even days because that was the license plate that we had on our car. Today, technology and innovation, American-style, has led us to a place where we have got an abundance of energy. All we're asking is that we permit a pipeline to carry their product safely all across the country so we can get that energy to the places we need it at prices Americans can afford. We know, too, that we suffer much like we did back in the late 1970s. At the same time we had this perceived shortage of fossil fuels, we also had enormously high unemployment. We had a misery index in the low twenties. Today, we have a similar phenomenon.…
