David Thomas: “I rise to speak a few moments today on energy and energy policy. Certainly, this is one of the issues President Bush has…”

“I rise to speak a few moments today on energy and energy policy. Certainly, this is one of the issues President Bush has talked about, and we have talked about it for some time in the Congress, the lack of a policy on energy. The President has asked Vice President Cheney to come up with some ideas with regard to energy and an energy policy. I believe he is going to do that within the next month. One of the important and interesting aspects of this working group Vice President Cheney has put together is that it involves the directors of several agencies. That is extremely important. What we thought is, we have an agency called the Department of Energy, which is fine, but much of what is done with respect to energy is done in some other agencies, such as Interior, EPA, and Agriculture. It is extremely important that we have a high level group such as this that will bring together the differences that have evolved out of the various agencies. We also are seeking to reactivate and continually activate an oil and gas forum in the Senate for those States that have particular interests in the production aspect of oil and gas and fuel.”