Doc Hastings: “Mr. Speaker, I think probably the right thing to do is just review back to how we got to this point. Let us remind…”

“Mr. Speaker, I think probably the right thing to do is just review back to how we got to this point. Let us remind ourselves we have not had an energy policy in this country for several decades, and we need to have an energy policy. This House has passed three energy bills, and the other body has not acted on those three energy bills. The last energy bill, however, did get to a conference where we worked out the disagreements between both of the bodies, and the ensuing conference report was then passed by this body and then went to the other body and was subject to a filibuster which, of course, is in their rules. In order to break that filibuster, it takes 60 votes. They got 58 votes. The presumption would be if they had a chance to vote up or down on the bill that perhaps they would have enough votes to pass the energy bill. But I think it is even more instructive to go back and reflect on how we got to this point of the conference report. In the House alone in the last 3 years, we had 80 public hearings on energy policy in this country. We had 11 markups in the various committees on this energy bill. They considered 224 amendments, and we had 5 days of floor debate with 39 amendments in this body. In the other body, there were 37 hearings, there were eight markups, and they had weeks of debate on the floor.”