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The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. GEKAS) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Speaker, our Nation must again declare independence, this time from dependence on foreign oil, foreign energy.
Why is this the case? Not just because our citizens are finding the prices increasing daily at the gas pump, not just because heating oil has risen in price steadily over the last several months, not because there are warning signs that the gasoline prices will continue to rise throughout the summertime, not just because we know statistically that we have 55 percent of our domestic energy needs have to come from abroad, not just because of that.
But if we find that all of these reasons are not important enough, then measure this, I ask the American public: For the sake of our national security, we must declare our independence from dependence on foreign support and imports of energy.
No more can the American people stand the spectacle of our Nation grovelling at the feet of the nations of OPEC and begging them to send us more oil, begging them to sell us more oil, to produce more oil. Please make it
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The only superpower in the world has to depend on that kind of diplomacy, begging the nations to send us more oil?
Well, we are better than that and we have the ingenuity and the resources and the brain power and the stamina and the intent and the greatness to become self-sufficient in our country on our needs for energy.
Therefore, I am introducing today the first step towards the declaration of this new independence of the United States, a bill that would create immediately a blue ribbon commission to determine ways and means by which our Nation will become energy self-sufficient.
No more shall we depend on foreign source energies for our needs. This commission would have to look into, as I view it, the possibility of more domestic drilling in the Midwest, in the North, in the Northwest to develop fully the possibilities of Alaskan new explorations, to determine how best we can fully develop offshore drilling, all of these with due consideration for the environment but necessary for our national survival.
We must weed through these obstacles that have been placed in front of us and which we have imposed on ourselves. There is no longer time in this new century for that kind of obstacle to get in the way of our being self-sufficient as a Nation.
We are calling our bill the NRG, the National Resources Governance Act of the year 2000. NRG. Energy. Energy. Do my colleagues get it? Energy, our own energy, so that we can propel our own automobiles, our own farm equipment, our own airplanes, our own machinery of all types so that we can continue to lead the world in the development of technology and telecommunications and all the other aspects of our society in which we lead the world.
But we cannot do that by placing our hands across the ocean and saying, please send us more energy, please do not raise the prices, please do not cut your production.
I, as an American, cannot any longer stand that. And I believe that a majority of the American citizens in our country feel the same way. We want to end our enslavement to foreign imports of energy. We want to declare independence for our country on the basic needs of our society to move at will, to produce at will, to provide for all our citizens as we want to provide, and actually to help the world as the superpower by creating our own ability to produce the energy necessary to fire the engine of our Nation towards even greater prosperity.
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