madam speaker , i thank the gentlewoman for her leadership and also for offering some time and providing us the opportunity tonight to speak to the energy bill . 
i also compliment the gentleman from colorado ( mr. beauprez ) xz4000200 and the gentleman from texas ( mr. hall ) xz4001650 and the gentleman from nebraska ( mr. terry ) xz4004000 for the insights that they have given us tonight into the whole concept of the energy bill . 
we are not talking about a few of the hot points that the news media like to talk an awful lot about . 
i can not go through the process that we did last week in formulating this energy bill without thinking of a childhood poem , and it goes like this : `` i saw a group of men in my hometown , i saw a group of men tearing a building down . 
with a heave and a ho and a mighty yell , they swung a beam and a sidewalk fell . 
`` so i said to the foreman , `hey , are these men skilled , you know , the kind i 'd hire if i wanted to build ? 
' and he laughed and said , `why , no , indeed , common labor is all i need . 
for with common labor i can tear down in a day or two what it took a builder 10 years to do. ' and so i thought to myself as i walked away , which of those roles am i going to play ? 
`` the 109th congress , madam speaker , is deciding now what role we are going to play . 
are we going to build an energy future ? 
are we going to build an economic future for this great nation of ours and for future generations ? 
are we going to put in place today a public policy that will serve this nation in our competitive efforts with the rest of the world ? 
i can tell you there is no other place in the world that this argument is going on , of whether or not we are going to energize our natural resources , energize our native creative genius in order to provide the cheapest and the most abundant and most reliable energy source that we possibly can . 
yet this is a heartfelt debate . 
fortunately for us , with the leadership of our chairman , the gentleman from texas ( mr. barton ) xz4000180 , we were able to come out of the committee with a great energy bill and in a bipartisan fashion . 
in fact , i myself have voted on this energy bill . 
although i have only been in this congress for 4 years and 4 months , i have voted on the energy bill four times , with the great hope that was going to be one thing as a member from idaho 's first congressional district i could leave as a legacy . 
yet 4 years and 4 months later , we are still wanting and still faced with those who will tear down rather than build up . 
i would like to talk about something that has not gotten , i believe , the attention that it needs . 
as the gentlewoman from tennessee ( mrs. blackburn ) xz4000320 mentioned early on , we have not built a refinery in this nation in nearly 30 years . 
garyville , louisiana , was the last refinery we built in this nation , and yet every day we continue to consume more and more refined gas . 
so our capacity to consume is increasing , yet our capacity in relationship to produce and to refine is dwindling . 
thus , we are counting more and more and more for yet another strategic part of our value-added energy on some foreign country . 
madam speaker , last fall i went down to venezuela and visited hugo chavez . 
one of the reasons i did that was because there are several idaho concerns down there probably mining more coal than any place else in the word , and mining more silver and gold than any place else in the world . 
there is an exploration company that is environmentally responsible in their exploration and in their research and development for venezuela 's natural resources . 
one of the other reasons i went down there was to see where we are importing a million , 800 , 000 barrels of refined fuel a day . 
we import 14 million barrels a day . 
we use 21 million barrels a day . 
so for two-thirds of our consumption , we are now relying on some other country that may be friend or foe , and mr. chavez has already suggested he is not going to be really friendly towards us . 
yet we are still relying for two-thirds of the strategic element for our economy on some other nation . 
we are relying on their labor , their tax base . 
we are relying on building up their economy in order to support our own rather than doing that ourselves . 
part of this bill we are looking at today is environmentally streamlined permitting . 
we heard many , many times in the committee , as the gentlewoman from tennessee ( mrs. blackburn ) xz4000320 will be able to attest to , we heard many times from the opposition , those who would not build but rather tear down , that there is not one permit that is waiting to go through the bureaucratic process , not one permit in the united states . 
i would suggest there ought to be a reason and that we need to take a look at that . 
one of the reasons nobody gets a permit is they have been denied for so long . 
they are so expensive and have been denied for so long . 
one thing i found out in caracas , venezuela , every u.s. oil company that owns a refinery in the united states is down there today asking for a permit to build one in venezuela . 
there are permits being given throughout the world and permits being requested . 
unfortunately , they are being requested where they find a friendly permitting process , or a permitting process . 
and i asked the fellows at lunch that day , are you telling me it is easier to get a permit down here ? 
they said , no , environmentally speaking , we have to obey the same laws . 
safety-wise we have to obey the same laws . 
they are no different than the united states except it happens . 
it happens . 
in the united states you can sit around for months and years , and then decades before you finally get a permit . 
and that is just too lengthy and too costly a process . 
they said , we come down here and we can get a permit in 6 to 8 months . 
we have to bond it and do everything we do in the united states . 
the thing is , these people are working with us . 
that is why we are here permitting . 
the other thing that this bill looks to is something that a lot of people in the united states do not realize . 
if a refinery today , one in garyville , louisiana , should happen to come across some new technology and that new technology would say they could increase their efficiency or their production capacity or their yield , and it happens to be more than 10 percent , they do not want to do it . 
the reason they do not want to do it is our environmental laws authorized by the environmental protection agency would say that new 10 percent is new source . 
what new source means is you have to go back and permit the whole plant , not just the 10 percent increased , but you have to go back and permit 100 percent of the plant 's production . 
so they may have increased since 30 years ago when the last one was permitted , they may have increased 6 or 7 percent , but they do not want to go beyond that or it will be very expensive to go on . 
for our economy and for the jobs that are increased and energized and permitted , refinery capacity would do that for this country of ours . 
for all of the good that could happen , i would say it is time for us , and we will be deciding tomorrow who they are that want to build and who they are that want to tear down . 
i am proud to say that all the folks that you have listened to tonight are the ones that want to build . 
i am amongst them , and i am sure the majority will be tomorrow . 
