Legislative History

Congressional Records - April 6, 1977

Following is the April 6, 1977 Congressional Record. The text below is compiled from the Office of Surface Mining's COALEX data base, not an original printed document, and the reader is advised that coding or typographical errors could be present.

123 CONG.REC. S5608
April 6, 1977

Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. President, the Congress and the American people are presently awaiting with great expectations the unveiling of the administration's comprehensive energy program. Although the program will not be formally presented for 2 weeks, we have received some indication of the directions to be taken from statements of the President and members of his Cabinet and by various bills already introduced in Congress and supported by the administration. Among these developments are a statement by the President to the effect that his forthcoming program will be strongly reliant on mandatory conservation, a statement by Dr. Schlesinger that the development of breeder reactors will be delayed for some time to come, the introduction of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act amendments, and the Coal Utilization Act.

S5608 I regret to say that these already publicized positions and measures, constituting a large portion of the ultimate Carter administration energy package, fall far short of realistic hopes and expectations for a rational, workable energy policy for the United States.

S5608 In fact, the program I see taking form is not just a failure, but a farce, one in which the Federal Government will continue to suppress energy development - as it has done for the last several years, force consumers to restrain energy consumption, and somehow hope that America will conserve itself into energy abundance. Such a program to "accentuate the negative" may appease those who want cheap energy while it lasts, or the radical environmentallsts who prefer no energy, but it continues to ignore the legitimate energy needs of our Nation, its economic growth, its military strength, and the basic energy demands of its people for jobs and a good standard of living.

{S5609} An area of particular disappointment which I would like to address today concerns coal, one of America's four primary energy resources for now and the remainder of the century. Administration policies now being formulated and legislation which has been offered, presumably in concert with the administration's forthcoming "Energy Program," will deny the coal industry the integral role it might otherwise play in solving our energy problems.

S5609 Two conflicting measures before the Senate will have a disastrous, crippling effect on this vital part of our energy industry. One is S. 977, the "Coal Utilization Bill" which mandates conversion from oil and natural gas to coal for electrical generation and industrial boilers. This measure is designed to promote the use of coal in place of other basic energy resources - and I certainly support the conversion of natural gas from boilers to coal - however, it is destined for failure, because of other aspects of the discordant energy program that is developing.

S5609 While S. 977 promotes coal utilization, another measure before the Senate works in exactly the opposite direction, discouraging coal production. S. 7, erroneously termed the surface mining bill, is instead a ban-surface mining bill, an anticoal production bill. The measure has gone far beyond reasonable regulation of coal mining and reclamation to effectively prevent the strip mining of coal, in favor of the more expensive and less productive deep mining of this resource.

S5609 These two measures, working in totally opposite directions, are representative of the overall energy effort as it now stands before the Congress and the administration. We have known for some time that only full production of the four basic energy resources available to us in quantity can supply America with the energy it needs for the rest of the century.

S5609 And yet, our policies with regard to the four resources - oil, gas, coal, and nuclear energy, continue to discourage rather than stimulate increased development of these resources.

S5609 In the days ahead I intend to comment in detail on the policies being formulated regarding these resources, and how these policies together from a blueprint for energy disaster in this country.

S5609 If we review very briefly the 4-year period that has just passed, virtually every action taken by Congress on energy has reduced the capability of our energy industry to produce domestic energy.

S5609 The incentives have been removed and replaced with negative incentives. The price has been rolled back to reduce the natural incentive of the marketplace to invest in more and more drilling, to produce more and more oil and gas.

S5609 So it is very important that Congresslook at the existing parts of the administration's energy program and assess them; and I believe Congress will come to the conclusion that, with the positions taken by the administration and the measures supported by the administration, we are not going to be able to realize the potential coal production we could otherwise, with no action; that we will not be able to have the nuclear energy that we desperately need, that we otherwise would have with existing programs permitted to continue, particularly in the breeder reactor area; that with the Outer Continental Shelf bill, if it passes as it is now submitted to Congress, we will not have sufficient drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and development of those resources to fill the need we have for more domestic oil and gas.

S5609 However, this is just a part of the total Carter package. We are not sure what the missing links are as yet, but we will see very soon.

S5609 Regardless of what is in the part that has not been announced, I do not see how we can have a workable energy program that is going to provide the needs of this Nation. Congress must look very closely at what is presented to it, so that we will develop a workable energy program that will resolve our problems, reduce our dependency on OPEC nations, provide the power for jobs - more and better jobs for this Nation - strengthen our economy, and assure us that our national defenses are strong.

S5609 It used to be that we would limit our imports of oil to 10 percent of our production for national security reasons. Today we are bringing in 50 percent of production by imports. This shows a foolish dependency on foreign sources of oil that we know are not reliable in all conditions.

S5609 So I tell my colleagues that I will continue analyzing the various aspects of the administration energy program as time goes on and as more parts of it are made known to all of us. But I think it is vital that Members of the Senate pay very close attention to all facets, so that we can develop a sensible program that will do the job for every American.

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