Dan Burton floor speech on Energy

Madam Speaker, I would like to say to the gentlewoman who just spoke that I sure share her admiration for Jesse Helms. I had the honor to work with him on legislation known as the Helms-Burton law, and I want you to know he was a wonderful man, a titan and a real conservative, and the kind of man that everybody in America could be proud to say that he was a Senator in the august body on the other side of the building.

Let me just say briefly today that we just celebrated the 4th of July, known as Independence Day, and we celebrate that because we became an independent Nation after the Revolutionary War by winning that war and becoming not a colony of Great Britain, but a United States of America, an independent country. Our Declaration of Independence.

Now we are faced with another problem. It is called energy dependence. We are dependent on Saudi Arabia, we are dependent on other countries in the Middle East, we are dependent on countries in South America like Venezuela that are not friends of ours, and we ought to be moving toward energy independence.

Any of my colleagues who were out marching in parades during the 4th of July recess ought to know that the people they were talking to on those parade routes were saying, hey, we don't want gasoline at $4 or $5 a gallon. We don't need to have gasoline at $4 or $5 a gallon, because we can drill right here in the United States and get enough oil or gas or other energy products so we can be energy independent. All we have to do is start.

The problem is in this body and the other body on the other side of the building, they will not move, the majority will not move on drilling here in the United States. We could drill in the ANWR in Alaska and get 1 to 2 million barrels of oil a day. We could drill off the continental shelf and get 1 or 2 million barrels of oil a day. We have about a 400 or 500 year supply of natural gas. And we are not doing anything. We are not drilling.

We are sending $400 or $500 million a day over to Saudi Arabia and to Venezuela and South America for oil that we could produce right mere in America. It is costing us jobs, it is costing us energy, it is causing food price hikes, the price of anything else that you buy that is transported by truck in this country, and the people going to and from work or paying $4 or $5 a gallon or $70 or $80 or $90 for one tankful.

They can't survive. The economy will continue to go down if we don't do something about these energy prices. And we are not going to do it until we allow this country to drill, this government to drill in places like the ANWR and off the Continental Shelf, and use the coal shale that we have here in abundance to produce our own energy. We can do it. The people of America by about an 80 percent margin say drill now, drill in America, lower those gas prices. And we are not doing it.

We just celebrated our declaration of independence from Great Britain. It is high time we had a declaration of independence regarding our energy. We need to drill here in America, we need to drill in the ANWR, we need to drill offshore and become energy independent. It is time. And I hope all of my colleagues will sign my good friend, Mr. Westmoreland from Georgia's petition over here that will let everybody know in this country, all of their constituents know that they are committed to drilling in America to get energy prices down.

He is going to take a one-hour special order here pretty quick telling everybody why we should be drilling here in America. So if I were talking to people across this country, Madam Speaker, I would say call your Congressman, call your Senator, and tell them to sign Mr. Westmoreland's petition so we can move toward energy independence. It is high time. We should do it now.