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Floor Speech

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment which would add the text of my Buy Low and Sell High Act, which I reintroduced last week along with my colleagues, Representatives Craig, Crow, Kuster, Spanberger, and Trone.

Mr. Chairman, we heard quite a bit earlier today, as well as yesterday, on how problematic the underlying bill before us is, how it does not represent a serious attempt to tackle the challenges and opportunities that come with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to make sure it can be put to work for all Americans while helping fuel transition to a 21st century clean energy economy.

Now, unlike my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, even when Democrats are in the minority, we do not become a Party of No. We stand ready to work on ideas that will seriously improve this country and to propose our substantive ideas to improve bills brought before the House, and that is what I am doing today with this amendment.

The Buy Low and Sell High Act is a serious bill that takes the Strategic Petroleum Reserve seriously. It doesn't use it as a political football, but instead, regards it as a valuable tool to our arsenal of energy security.

The amendment would create an economic petroleum reserve within this reserve that would be specifically to sell crude oil when prices are high and buy crude oil when prices are low. Some of the profits for that would then be reinvested into the American economy, accelerating the electrification revolution that everyone from President Biden to the CEO of every automaker can tell us is happening, not in the future, but right now.

It would also create a network of regional product reserves, so we have a full national network of crude and petroleum products.

The Colonial pipeline hack nearly 2 years ago was illustrative of the need for regional product reserves. Crude by itself doesn't do us any good without refining capacity and the infrastructure to take it across the country. Regional product reserves can fight local shortages immediately.

My amendment also includes Ms. Houlahan's important bill, which goes further than our Republican Chamber did 2 weeks ago, in preventing barrels from our strategic reserves from going not just to China, but also not going to Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Unlike our colleagues, Mr. Chairman, Democrats are not soft on Russia. We are not soft on Iran. We are not soft on North Korea.

Finally, the bill would build on the work in the fiscal year 2023 omnibus bill that this Chamber passed last month to give the Department of Energy further flexibility with congressionally mandated sales from the reserve and required the Department of Energy time those sales to maximize revenue back to the American taxpayer.

Now, these are all commonsense ideas. They should be bipartisan ideas. They are certainly more serious than the bill before us today.

Unfortunately, it seems that Republicans aren't willing to engage in a serious endeavor like this. They are not willing to hear our dissenting views on this.

In any case, I would ask this amendment be adopted so we can take a serious look at what needs to be done to address the energy crisis.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time. Point of Order

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, the amendment meets the germaneness requirement of clause 7 of rule XVI.

The amendment is germane because the amendment does not introduce a new subject of the text proposed to be amended.

The subject of the introduced bill is applying certain requirements to drawdowns from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The subject of the amendment also applies certain requirements to drawdowns.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I have to stress that the reason that this amendment is germane is because we are trying on the Democratic side to seriously address the energy crisis and the energy future of this country.

The Republicans are not doing that. They are simply using political points and trying to prevent the use of the reserve to actually help reduce the cost of gasoline at the pump.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I know we are closing the debate now on the underlying bill, but I will say one more time, we have been at this 2 days now. We have had a lot of amendments. I certainly appreciate the fact that we have had an open rule and that Members on our side of the aisle have had an opportunity to present amendments and speak. A lot of our new Members have had that opportunity.

The bottom line, Mr. Chairman, is that this underlying bill makes no sense, and it is strictly a political message. It is going nowhere. The President has already said that he would veto it, and the Senate won't take it up.

The bottom line is that as Democrats what we are trying to do is address affordability issues for the American public in the context of gasoline prices. We knew as prices went up that we should use every tool in our arsenal to try to bring them down. That is what President Biden did. He decided to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to provide more supply and bring down prices. It succeeded in doing that. His actions did that. From the price in June at a high, it went down about $1.69 per gallon.

Why would the Republicans want to deny the President--not just President Biden, but any President--that opportunity?

We are just trying to address the concerns that the American people have.

We did it on drug prices by saying we are going to negotiate drug prices.

We did it on insulin by saying we wanted to cap it at $35 a month.

Democrats are constantly trying to address these affordability issues, many of which resulted from the COVID crisis.

The bottom line is, I don't understand why the Republicans would suggest that the President not be able to do that.

They talk over and over again about how it is necessary to lease more public lands at a time when over half the leases that are out there are already not being used by the oil companies because the oil companies don't want more oil. They don't want more supply. They want to keep the price down. If there is more supply and more pumping of oil domestically or internationally, they lose those huge profits that they have made in the last few years.

Please, don't hamstring this administration. Let us use the reserve in part to try to bring prices down and let the President continue to have that option.

Mr. Chair, I would urge opposition to H.R. 21, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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