Frank Pallone: “I wanted to briefly point out that although the comments I made earlier were primarily with regard to the President's…”

“I wanted to briefly point out that although the comments I made earlier were primarily with regard to the President's proposal, President Bush and Vice President Cheney's proposals and what they are likely to come up with tomorrow from their task force in terms of a policy to address energy issues, that it is also true that for the last 6 years since the Republicans have been in the majority in this Congress, that they have conveniently forgotten, or failed really, to address what has now become an energy crisis. And each year from 1995 on when President Clinton and the congressional Democrats tried to present commonsense, balanced, both immediate and long-term solutions to the energy problems that existed then and were continuing to build, the Republicans blocked those efforts in the Congress every step of the way. If I could just mention a few, I think the most egregious was in 1999, I remember, I was here, when the Republican leaders, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) joined 36 other Republicans to introduce a bill that would have eliminated the Department of Energy altogether and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. As I mentioned, President Bush still says that he does not want to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but they would have abolished it completely.”