John Cornyn: “one thing has been accomplished by the debate leading up to this morning's vote; that is, Congress finally…”

“one thing has been accomplished by the debate leading up to this morning's vote; that is, Congress finally-- finally--has acknowledged the existence of the law of supply and demand. If we look at these two votes we are going to have this morning, first is the McConnell-Domenici amendment, of which I am proud to be a cosponsor, which would produce, if implemented, potentially up to 3 million additional barrels of oil a day from the United States of America--3 million--making us less dependent on imported oil from some of our Nation's enemies, countries such as Iran and Venezuela that are part of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Alternatively, our friends on the other side of the aisle have proposed--and I will vote for it--a temporary suspension of putting oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But how much does that represent? It represents 70,000 barrels of oil that would not be put in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and would be available on the open market as an additional supply of oil, which is then available to be refined into gasoline. I suspect it will have some modest impact on the price of gasoline at the pump, maybe 3 to 5 cents a gallon.”