Kent Conrad: “in many ways this may be one of the most important amendments we offer on our side. I say that because if I look across…”

“in many ways this may be one of the most important amendments we offer on our side. I say that because if I look across the horizon at the challenges facing America, energy dependence would be right at the top of the list. In his State of the Union Message, the President said: [W]e have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. I think the President has that exactly right. We can see in this chart that imports now account for 60 percent of total U.S. consumption; that is, of the oil that we are consuming, 60 percent of it is imported. That creates a vulnerability for America. This dependence on imported energy is dramatically adding to our record trade deficit; $266 billion of the trade deficit over the last year is due to imported petroleum products. We ran a trade deficit during that period of about $700 billion. More than a third of it is due to our reliance on foreign energy. That represents over a third of the total trade deficit. The President made very strong statements in the State of the Union about the need to reduce our dependence, reduce our vulnerability. But if you look at his budget, you see something quite different: the clean coal power initiative, cut 90 percent; weatherization assistance grants to improve conservation of energy in homes reduced almost a third; electricity delivery and reliability, cut 23 percent; fossil energy R&D, cut 21 percent. Mr.…”