Date: 2008-06-11
Speaker: BRUCE BRALEY (democrat)
Chamber: H

suggests in this resolution. that I think we are.going to adopt today. certainly we are in support of it. says that it helps our economy more if we buy products that are made in America. Of course. those products are made by people employed in America. and it will have a cyclical turn of the dollar where it goes to not only that company. but those people working there. which then in turn they get to spend within their community and it turns over. But one of my fears. well. not fears. but lets just say concerns. is that now with the gas prices everywhere over $4. it hit $4 in almost every gas station back in Nebraska in my district yesterday. that the stimulus checks arent going for what we thought they were going to go to. and that is for consumers to have a nice little chunk of change where they could go out and buy an appliance. something that they need in their home. something that they can reach out and really help with the bigger dollar item that helps to really stimulate the economy. Now it is probably going to go to just filling up the gas tank. We have got two cars in our family that are smaller cars. My Camry. I put over $70 in filling up in Omaha this weekend. I cant imagine what bigger families are doing to keep up with this. So. frankly. if we want to go even a step further and stimulate our economy more. what we should do in addition to these stimulus checks is adopt an energy plan that will actually increase supply and lower the price of gasoline at the pump. We can do this by embracing a very comprehensive approach to energy. We have got alternative fuels like coaltoliquid. And. by the way. last week during the Department of Defense reauthorization. this Congress adopted a policy of banning the Air Force from engaging in contracts to buy coaltoliquid as a synthetic aviation fuel. We can use cellulosic energy. We :are going to have about 13 small micropilot plants come on within the next couple of years. We can do things to speed that up. by passing a tax credit that is more than 1 year. like we did a couple of years ago. instead of adopting the 5year plan that this side of the aisle was pushing. We can also not only use those types of alternatives that have such great promise that we can use in a mix. but we can also do conservation. We want to encourage people to conserve not only the electricity in their home. but we are talking about fuel here to create a supply that will lower the price at the gas pump. which is a notsohidden tax on American families. We can do that by incenting. providing a tax credit for more than 1 year. for people to buy in plugin electric hybrids. Some - American manufacturers are going to start rolling those out next year. but they will be more expensive. So we want to incent people -to buy those. If we can do a blend and conserve. we can take a large step towards energy independence. We can get fully independent of all OPEC oil if we add one more prong to this plan. and that is allow offshore drilling. Right now we have China working through Cuba that is getting to within about 60 miles of the Florida shore. but yet we cant have American companies do that. We can open up oil shale. Last year. about November. we had a vote on this floor that banned the ability to get oil from oil shale in Colorado and Wyoming. We just found another large pocket of oil from oil shale in North Dakota. I wonder when that is going to be banned to use. So if we bring our own resources together with all of the alternatives. we can bring the price of gas down rather dramatically and be independent. And if we can bring the price down. have a stable supply of energy under this type of a comprehensive plan. the American consumers. the fanjilies. can expect .stable gas prices for a generation or more as we work towards completely going off of fossil fuels. to like a hydrogen economy. So while we stand on this side of the aisle in favor of this resolution to buy American. my fear is that the reality is most of this stimulus money is going to be. going to the OPEC countries when we fill up our tax tanks. Madam Speaker. I reserve the balance of my time.