John B. Breaux: “the subject matter is energy. I just came from a meeting with the Vice President and a group of Senators, both…”

“the subject matter is energy. I just came from a meeting with the Vice President and a group of Senators, both Republicans and Democrats, who are trying to see what we can do as a Congress to come up with an energy policy that makes sense for this country. It is very clear that the United States at this time is in dire circumstances with regard to where we get energy, how much we get, and how much it costs. Over the last several weeks and the last couple of months, we have seen the price of gas go up. We have seen people panicking because they cannot afford their electricity bills because of the high price of natural gas. We see the uncertainty of areas of this country suffering blackouts and businesses having to close and suffer economic damage because they don't have enough energy. At the same time, we import 57 percent of the energy we consume every day from foreign sources. Many of these foreign sources are undependable. They are not our allies, and they certainly do not have the best interests of the United States as the premise for their operations. Yet 57 percent of our energy comes from overseas. It comes from organized cartels that regularly do things for which, if done in this country, they would go to the penitentiary. What they do every day is fix prices of energy that we have to buy from them. They tell us how much we are going to have to pay by controlling the amount they produce.”