On the recordDecember 16, 2011
I guess I am one of several Senators who doesn't know for sure what is going to happen tonight or tomorrow. I do know that we have one very contentious issue in the pipeline. Several people have been talking about this. I would like to give, perhaps, a different, maybe a historic perspective on this issue as we are looking at it. I think with all the talk and all the demagoging people want us to be independent from the Middle East when producing our energy in fact we have the recoverable resources in the United States to be totally independent--for the North American Continent to be totally independent in providing its own energy. We are the only country in the world that does not exploit its own resources. We have more recoverable reserves in oil, gas, and coal than any other country in the world. Yet it is a political problem because there are people who do not want to exploit our own resources. They do not want to go offshore. They do not want to go there. Eighty-four percent of our onshore public land is off-limits, so we cannot drill there. It is very disturbing when we see the real reason. We have an administration that doesn't want us to exploit our own resources. We have a Secretary of Energy who said we are going to have to get the price of gasoline in the pumps comparable to Europe, $8 a gallon, before people realize we have to go in another direction other than fossil fuels.…
