The need to end this de facto moratorium is not only crucial to the Gulf, but it is also a national imperative.

I think a much bigger picture here is what is our administration doing in terms of actually deliberately allowing, if not driving, oil prices, gasoline prices up to fit a larger ideological belief.

The point I am trying to make here is a solid American company, an independent who made a tremendous capital investment in a rig that is built in America.

We, in Texas, have lost approximately 2,500 jobs, 622 million in gross domestic product, 153 million in wages.

Republicans on this Committee intend to act aggressively to ensure that our American energy resources are harnessed.

Statistics on a page simply don't reflect the lives that have been changed by this embargo.

As the Chairman, I intend to introduce legislation to put the Gulf of Mexico back to work.

The United States should not voluntarily subject itself to the whims or happenings of unstable foreign countries.

This Committee will not sit idly by.

Tomorrow, we're going to take up another short-term continuing resolution. In the meantime, today, tomorrow, the next day, we will be borrowing $4 billion a day that we don't have to pay the deficit that this administration is running…

Mr. Speaker, these are trying times. Charles Dickens said ``the best of times and the worst of times.'' More freedoms than any nation has ever enjoyed in the history of the world are right here in this country. We have been blessed so…