Joe Barton: “It looked to me like it was. We had a good debate on it there and it was rejected, and I honestly hope that the House…”

“It looked to me like it was. We had a good debate on it there and it was rejected, and I honestly hope that the House does the same. Mr. Chairman, I want to read a part of the amendment. It says under section 151, ``Presidential actions. For purposes of reducing waste of oil and decreasing demand for foreign oil, not later than 6 months after the date of enactment of this act, appropriate Federal departments and agencies identified by the President shall propose voluntary, regulatory, and other actions,'' other actions, ``sufficient to reduce the demand for oil in the United States by at least 1 million barrels per day from projected demand for oil in 2013.'' Now, let us go through that. The gentleman is stating that we are wasting oil. I guess when I hop in my pickup truck to go to the store to get some milk, then I am wasting gasoline. But my wife does not think I am wasting it, my children or stepchildren do not think I am wasting it when they get to drink the milk that I go get, but I guess maybe we are. So I do not know how we would identify this waste, but I assume there would be some Federal commission that could identify the waste of oil. Of course, it talks about decreasing the demand for foreign oil. Well, oil is oil. We do get about 14 million barrels a day from overseas, and God bless us that we do. Our economy would come to a halt if we did not. So I am not sure how we would work on that.…”