Ed Markey: “this was not a half bad resolution as it was produced by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) and the gentleman from…”

“this was not a half bad resolution as it was produced by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) and the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson) out of the committee. In fact, what it said was that the President would be able to use his existing legal authorities to reduce, to suspend, or to terminate assistance to these OPEC nations, including military aid or arms sales. So in other words, if the heads of all these counties are going to go into a room and say, they are not getting any more oil from us or we are going to reduce it dramatically, then leaders from our country are going to go into a room and say, well, they are not going to get what we have got in our country that they want. But by the time that it had been transformed by the miracle of the Committee on Rules, every meaningful part of this resolution has been removed; and all we have left is, basically, a resolution which says this oil crisis is really a very bad thing. Now, we are all going to agree with that. It is a bad thing. But the Committee on Rules had a chance to put into order for us to debate out here on the floor the reauthorization of the strategic petroleum reserve, which is what our President can use to talk to the leaders of their country in deploying our oil reserves, 560 million barrels of oil.…”