Congressman Pence on Your World
FOXNEWS
8-4-08

NEIL CAVUTO: All right, this was a big change here folks. So why not just vote on it right now? Welcome everybody, I’m Neil Cavuto and this is “Your World.” Very glad to be back. With me now Democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell of New Jersey is going to be joining me shortly but right now we have with us Representative Mike Pence a Republican who has been leading the push to get this drilling going and now. But Congressman, your party is not in the majority and it does not look like it is happening.

REP. MIKE PENCE: Well that’s right Neil and that is why for the second day in a row and for the balance of this week, Republicans are back on the House floor even though the House adjourned at about 11:00 a.m. last Friday. Last week, some 50 House Republicans continued the debate in a darkened chamber with the microphones turned off and today I am so proud that more than 20 Republican members of Congress flew back to Washington, D.C., left their families and their vacations and their districts behind, and they have been on the floor today conducting the closest thing to a House version of a filibuster that I've ever seen in my life.

CAVUTO: Why doesn’t the President who has the power to call Congress back do so?

REP. PENCE: Well, I urged him to do that last week along with Jeb Hensarling from Texas. We encouraged the President to use his Article 2 power to call the Congress back into session.

CAVUTO: But he hasn’t. He hasn’t. Why not?

REP. PENCE: Well, he hasn’t yet and I understand that the last time that happened was 1948. Whereas in the eight years I have been in Congress, Neil, in the last eight years Congress has called emergency sessions on two different occasions. It is much more routine for the Congress to be called back into session by the Speaker and our message on the floor today—dozens and dozens of Republicans speaking just to citizens in the darkened House gallery—is that we want Speaker Nancy Pelosi to call this Congress back into session immediately and give us an up or down vote on giving the American people more access to American oil.

CAVUTO: Now let's say Congressman you get your wish. The president I would think is opposed to making this call because, as you know, Senator Obama has called for tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve which is generally reserved for emergencies or times of war. So if he were to call the Congress back into session he would essentially be acquiescing to what Senator Obama has said is a real crisis. Right? So he is kind of on a sticky wicket here, right?

REP. PENCE: Well I don’t know if it’s a sticky wicket. I do not know whether Senator Obama and identifying that we have a new energy crisis makes it so. It’s just a reality. People in Indiana, people all over America are hurting, Neil. As I have said repeatedly on the House floor in a darkened chamber here with my colleagues, the American people are not going to get a vacation from $4 per gallon gas so Congress should not take a five-week paid vacation.

CAVUTO: Understood. Are you for tapping that reserve right now?

REP. PENCE: Well look strategic reserve is for strategic purposes. We have vast reserves off the Continental Shelf, and the Gulf of Mexico, and in Alaska. I think if you brought this Congress back, I really believe that for the first time ever Neil there is a bipartisan majority in Congress that would vote for a comprehensive energy bill that allowed more drilling. We will do conservation. We will do additional sources of energy—wind and solar—but I believe there is a bipartisan majority that would support more drilling. That is why Republicans are here talking to darkened chamber, to hundreds of civilians on tour of the nation’s Capitol, saying to Speaker Pelosi bring ‘em back!

CAVUTO: Just to be clear, you would be for looking at alternatives and looking for more exploration as well as tapping the reserve.

REP. PENCE: That’s exactly right. I think it was The American Energy Act that was introduced just a couple weeks ago by Republicans in Congress. It’s an all of the above agenda that includes conservation and alternative sources but it also includes more drilling. I really believe that the reason why the Democratic leadership has not brought that bill or a compromise bill like that to the floor is because it would pass. There is a pro-drilling majority on Capitol Hill. Speaker Pelosi needs to bring this Congress back to Capitol Hill and House Republicans are fighting in that darkened chamber to get people to call their Congressman and tell them to come back to work in Washington.

CAVUTO: I am sure the next person with slightly disagree.