Ron Wyden: “with the Senate heading for the break for the Fourth of July recess, obviously, there will not be many more days left in…”

“with the Senate heading for the break for the Fourth of July recess, obviously, there will not be many more days left in this year's schedule. I am going to spend some time on the floor in the days ahead focusing on those areas where there is significant bipartisan support for making a real difference for the American people, especially on those key domestic issues of energy and health care, two areas I know the Presiding Officer, the distinguished Senator from North Carolina, cares a great deal about. For example, on the energy front, today, I and Senator Kyl and Senator Snowe and Senator Lieberman sent a letter to the distinguished majority leader, Senator Frist, asking that we have an opportunity to debate how the Government can save between $20 billion and $80 billion on an energy program that is totally out of control. It involves the Federal Government's oil and natural gas royalty program. It is a program that began at a time when oil was somewhere in the vicinity of $20 a barrel. It has been a bipartisan concern of Senators that it makes no sense to spend billions and billions of dollars subsidizing the price of oil when it is at record levels. I spent, as you know, Mr. President, about 5 hours on the floor of the U.S. Senate discussing this issue a few weeks ago, and I certainly have no intention of duplicating that this afternoon.…”