The Republican response to rising gas prices is to bring forward today or tomorrow on the House floor a feel-good, do-nothing bill. Members of Congress will rattle their rhetorical sabers at OPEC. But what we ought to be doing -- what the American people expect and deserve -- is serious legislating on energy policy. I will oppose the bill they are bringing forward because it does not allow for meaningful energy policy amendments.

There are many worthy amendments which deserve consideration but the Republican leadership refuses to allow us to consider these sound initiatives to increase energy independence and reduce reliance on foreign sources of oil a regional home heating oil reserve for the northeast, reauthorization of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a suspension of exports of oil produced in Alaska, incentives to improve the energy efficiency and promote use of renewable energy sources, increasing CAFE standards.

We ought to be focusing on what we can do to improve energy policy in the United States rather than on what we can not control overseas.

It was only a year ago that Republican committee chairmen were holding hearings and complaining about historically low oil prices hurting oil and gas production. Now they are trying to blame the Administration for oil price increases. The reality is that congressional Republicans have undercut the effort for energy independence by failing to enact the Administration's energy initiatives.

They have compounded the current oil supply and price crisis by cutting funding for energy conservation and efficiency programs.

Since they took control of the Congress in 1995, Republican leaders in Congress have underfunded energy conservation and efficiency programs by providing $2 billion below the Administration's proposed spending levels. They have steadily cut back on critical energy programs, including solar and renewables, weatherization and other initiatives.

And Republican leaders are proposing to make things even worse in the upcoming budget resolution by effectively cutting energy programs by 30 percent.

Instead of working constructively to deal with complex energy problems, some Republican leaders have seen the price increases merely as political opportunities to advance their longstanding -- but unpopular -- agenda to open the coast of California and other states to oil drilling, and to promote oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

They also put out press releases claiming that the Clinton-Gore Administration has "done nothing" to increase domestic oil production.

The economic fact of the matter is that oil production in this country has declined recently because of low oil prices, not Administration policies .

When prices are low, there is less incentive to drill and produce. When prices are high, as they are now, production should pick up. In fact, the Department of the Interior is projecting that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico will increase by nearly one-third in the next two years.

The Administration is opposed to expanded oil development off the California and Florida coasts or in the Alaska wildlife refuge. So is most of the American public. But to say that this Administration has not been supportive of the domestic oil and gas industry is unfair.

Among other policies, they have promoted royalty incentives for the deep water in the Gulf of Mexico, they have allowed leasing in the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, and they have supported the export of Alaskan oil as incentives for producers.

I think the Administration has gone too far with some of these policies, providing undeserved windfalls to the energy companies. As for Alaska oil exports, we can no longer afford to send domestically produced oil to Asia when oil supplies are short and prices are so high on the West Coast. About 60,000 barrels of Alaska oil per day is being diverted away from west coast consumers.

It's tragic that we are not allowed to debate and vote today on the DeFazio amendment which would assure that Alaska oil is used to help in this time of high prices.

Once again, what we ought to be doing -- what the American people expect and deserve -- is serious legislating on energy policy. The Republican bill being brought forward this week fails to accomplish that.