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The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. FOLEY) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. FOLEY. Mr. Speaker, if this campaign for President goes on much longer, it may be capable of being admitted into ``Ripley's Believe It or Not''. In fact, I am speaking specifically of our candidate on the Democratic side, the Vice President of the United States.
Many people will remember some of the claims that he has made in recent years, including ``I invented the Internet,'' ``I discovered Love Canal,'' ``I was the feature for Love Story,'' and then recently he imagined his dog and mother-in-law were taking the same medicine for arthritis in which to compare pricing and scare seniors in my home State of Florida to reality check, if you will, that neither one apparently is taking the medicine, or at least the analysis was incorrect and flawed at best.
More recently he is going to crack down on Hollywood and then goes out there and raises buckets of money and says to them, ``Do not worry, I am only here to nudge you.'' Now he wants to tap into the Strategic Reserve because he sponsored the legislation that created it and authorized the first funds to purchase the fuel, even though that was created 2 years before he came to Congress.
He continues to accuse the Bush campaign of being beholden to big oil, yet continues to refuse to fully explain his ties and financial dealings with Armand Hammer, the late chairman of Occidental Petroleum, and a long favorite of the Russian Government.
More recently now as we talk about the Strategic Reserve, many in this Congress claim on both sides of the aisle that the intervention of the White House on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has caused the market on energy and fuel prices to plummet because of their outstanding leadership on this issue.
Let me read to my colleagues from today's USA Today in the Money section, Thursday September 28: ``Forget oil. The price of natural gas is skyrocketing. All but unnoticed in the recent furor over crude oil and heating oil, the price of natural gas,'' and let me underscore this point, ``which heats more than five times as many homes as heating oil has soared to record heights with hardly a pause since July. The natural gas future prices hit 531 per million British thermal units Wednesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, more than double its load this year of $2.17 on January 5 and up about 62 cents over last month.''
Then the claim is that the tapping of the Strategic Reserve is not about politics. That one may top all other whoppers committed by the campaign to date.
The Strategic Reserve was established to make certain that America would never become dependent on foreign fuels during a crisis. During a crisis, like the Persian Gulf, we were able to last tap into that reserve to make certain our country handled that crisis calmly and that there was no interruption in domestic life.
But now because of the campaign, the concerns when soccer moms are complaining about the high price of gas, we have an administration that is quickly willing to tap into that very viable and vital supply that is there for all Americans to use.
Now, think about it in one's own life. Many people, I am certain, think about buying a new car, maybe going on vacation. They make the analogy that I will borrow from my savings account and I will pay it back because this is really important. Of course most of us realize we never quite get around to paying it back or, if we do, it is usually late or not at all.
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Now, look at the analogy here of 30-plus million barrels of oil. When and how do we pay it back, and at what price? Saddam Hussein and others must be cheerfully mocking America today and thinking, let us get them to continue, in the art of politics, to draw down their reserves, and then we in OPEC will spike prices so that when they have to replace it for the purpose of the strategic reserve, they will not be paying $30 or $32, they may be paying $40 or $45. But then the election will be over and no one will really have to explain the financial gimmickry we went for in order to do a temporary fix at the pumps.
We have not had a consistent energy policy the past 8 years. We have not embarked on enough wind energy and solar power and other alternative fuel sources. We have become too dependent, too consistently obligated to foreign sources. Yet this administration, in response to a domestic enterprise, sues Microsoft. They should have been suing OPEC, possibly for collusion on price.
When Americans fill up their cars over the next few weeks, the one question most important to them should be, are we better off than we were 8 years ago? I would say they are not better off than they were even 1 or 2 years ago. During this administration prices have risen to the highest level we have had over the last 10 years; the last time being during a conflict in the Persian Gulf.
So I urge my colleagues to look at the record, reflect on it, and, hopefully, urge the administration not to tap into our Strategic Petroleum Reserve by playing politics with petroleum.
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