Real Security Plan for America

REAL SECURITY PLAN FOR AMERICA

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Ms. KAPTUR. I thank our colleague from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff) for their own energy and helping America shape a different century and different millennium in this 21st, and to say that there could be no more important dedication for us as public officials than to meet America's chief strategic vulnerability in imported petroleum with real answers. To do so, as Congressman Schiff reminded us, when President Kennedy helped to do what was hard and lead America to land a man on the Moon, it was done within 10 years.

At that time, I remember as a child, it seemed so impossible to land a man on the Moon. Yet now we see space shuttles. When you stand outside and look at the sky, and you watch the shuttle come before the Moon and then go back around again, you may see what this Nation has achieved since the 1960s.

But, indeed, we did land a man on the Moon in 10 years. I am troubled by the long-time horizon on new forms of energy, because if the government of the United States were serious, within 10 years it could use its own power to help convert this Nation.

I will just discuss two of the committees on which I serve that have major roles to play in this conversion. Both Congressman Schiff and Congressman Van Hollen have talked about the Department of Agriculture.

What Congressman Van Hollen has said is true, that although the President, in his State of the Union, talked about energy addiction and the importance of transitioning America to be energy independent, the cost-cutting budget of the Department of Agriculture, under his administration every single year, has cut funds for renewables.

Farmers struggle in the rural communities across this country to try to piece together the investment dollars and have the confidence that what they are doing will weather the kind of beating that they will take from the oil cartels, who command the marketplace and control the price in this country. Please don't try to convince me it is a free market. Oh, no, it is only a free market for those who control the spigots.

It isn't a free market for the consumer at all. Because in the community I represent, even if I want to buy a car that runs on ethanol, there is only one pump, and that was only put in after considerable pressure. Who has time to go way over to another part of the State or another part of the city to go fill up, with families having the pressures that they have on them in the workplace today?

No, the Department of agriculture, although I authored the first title to a farm bill in American history, title 9, that has the ability to invest some dollars in renewable energy through the farm community, it is such a pittance. It is almost laughable, except it is all we have. There isn't any major division over at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, even until today, that deals with energy independence and bringing up the full array of renewables.

We know about ethanol, because ethanol is derived from corn, and corn is heavily subsidized. So, of course, we are going to get more alcohol from corn. But you know the truth is, in terms of science, that isn't the crop with the most oil, with the most ability to be refined. There are other seed crops that have much higher oil content. We have just never developed them.

So the Federal Government isn't in the lead on this in agriculture. It is actually following in the wake of real progressive States like Minnesota, which I call the Thomas Alva Edison Center of the 21st century. What they are doing, they are viewing new energy production and new renewables and new investment there as economic development for the State of Minnesota.

We have a lot to learn from them. The Federal Government ought to just copy what the State of Minnesota has done and make it available across the country. But it is a tragedy now because even though Detroit makes dozens and dozens of vehicles that will run on these new renewable fuels, there are no gas pumps around the country.

There were a few incentives in one of the bills that we passed here in terms of tax credits and incentives for companies to put in tanks in the ground, but it is not serious. It is just sort of limping along. It isn't the kind of great challenge President Kennedy gave to us and the challenge that the Nation met.

If I could just say a word about the Department of Defense, it is incredible that the Secretary of Defense of this Nation would come before the Defense Appropriations Committee, when asked the question, what role did he see for his Department, the largest purchaser of petroleum in the United States of America, and petroleum-based products, to help erase this strategic vulnerability that we had due to the fact that we import three-quarters of our petroleum, he said, That is not my job. That's the Department of Energy's job.

I couldn't believe it. I went up to him afterwards, and I said, well, if it isn't our job, why do we have our Fifth Fleet porting in Bahrain holding up that government? You start looking around where we have put our defense forces to protect the oil lanes. We had a vote here today on Oman. It is pretty clear the Strait of Hormuz is very strategically important to us, because we are totally dependent on that oil lifeline.

To me, that is America's chief defense vulnerability. So why doesn't Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld know about it? He doesn't want to know about it. Know what, the generals know about it. The generals at the Air Force know it, the generals at the Navy Department know it. The generals over at Army know about it, and they know about the soldiers in the field.

We have research projects going on at DOD to try to have solar tents where the sun's rays are used if we have to move battalions around and try to provide alternative ways of powering these different defense systems that we have in theater. People on the ground know. The Guard and Reserve know. America has to change.

I hope the Secretary or somebody in his office will give him some of my remarks, because the Department of Defense ought to be in the lead. Then many of the other Federal agencies will follow.

The Federal agency that deserves the biggest star for doing what is right is the postal service. The postal service, with its vehicles, and some of them only get 12 miles a gallon, we ought to convert those, has done more than any other Federal agency to use its power to try to use vehicles that run on new fuels, batteries, new technology, hybrids, which Congressman Schiff and Congressman Van Hollen have referenced in their remarks.

The Federal Government itself, as major a share of the U.S. economy as it is, could do wonders. Would it not be great if the President had hybrids as part of the White House lineup? Wouldn't it be great if the Secretary of Defense could see his way to thinking about this and integrating the energy mandate into what the Department of Defense does?

Wouldn't it be great if the Secretary of Agriculture actually helped the farmers of this country become owners in the new energy industries that are being created across the fields of Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana and so many other places, rather than making these farmers struggle and be threatened with bankruptcy because they can't, they don't have all the connections on Wall Street, and they can't get up to the $40 million level for investment?

So I thank the gentleman for giving me a chance to say a few words here this evening. I share your absolute commitment to energy independence by 2020 or even sooner than that.

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Ms. KAPTUR. I just wanted to add that if one looks at the automotive industry, and I have all major companies in my district and in my State, and talking about their focus along with our focus, we have to continue to open closed markets of the world. That's where markets expand. You have to put some energy there. You can't just kind of put it on the back shelf.

Many years ago President George Bush the first went to Tokyo. I still remember he got very sick at a dinner, and he was there for auto parts talks, market opening talks. And ever since that day, there has never been an aggressive effort by any administration to open up the second-largest market in the world. So we have failed on the trade front significantly.

And the major automotive firms have chosen a low-wage strategy rather than an innovation strategy. So they have been moving plants around the globe seeking cheap labor, whether it is China, Mexico, wherever it is, rather than focusing on the innovation that is inherent in the American people that was responsible for the dawn of the automotive age in this country in the first place.

Those kind of minds are still out there, but we are kind of wed to old technology and the fact that if you sell a very large vehicle in this country, you make a little more profit than if you sell a smaller vehicle. The larger vehicles use more gas and petroleum-based products. We were stuck in that mold for a very, very long time.

And if you go out and ask the average consumer what they are looking for, and the lines are showing it, they are looking for the new technology, and it just was not brought on.

So the strategy that was chosen in the 1980s and 1990s has not led our Nation toward energy independence in vehicles. Now we see ads on television by the big companies saying we are trying to catch up. Well, we really need to catch up very, very quickly or they are going to become another segment of our wealth that are purchased by foreign interests and no longer belongs to us. We are seeing a lot of that as we pawn off pieces of America to try to cover our long-term debts and what we owe to the future, which I am very upset about, but alone can't solve.

Nonetheless, I think our automotive companies really need to focus on innovation, listen to what the consumer is saying, give them what they want, and open up the closed markets of the world. That would go a long way to helping this industry revive. And then we have the legacy costs of the companies that have been in existence for a very long period of time that this Congress could do something about in order to make whole the pension and health benefits that workers were promised. That is a whole other Special Order.

I thank Congressman Schiff and Congressman Van Hollen for allowing us to speak about such an important subject and one that is at the top of the list in terms of domestic security, and that is energy independence.

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