Do you want to flip a coin? Senator Campbell is on our committee.

Senator CAMPBELL. Congressman Skaggs apparently is not real rushed, so I will go ahead and start, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Good.

STATEMENT OF HON. BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL,

U.S. SENATOR FROM COLORADO

Senator CAMPBELL. Just let me tell you that I consider this a particular honor to be able to introduce my friend and colleague Federico Peña. We worked together for 15 years. As you know, Federico was in the State legislature just before I was. And I have known him and Ellen for a good number of years, and they have become personal friends. And I consider it not a duty to be here to introduce him, but a personal honor, because I have always considered Federico a man of quality and honesty and integrity.

He is now being considered for the Secretary of Energy, as you know. I think his past performance as mayor of Denver, as a State legislator, and as the Secretary of Transportation speaks for itself. And I will not try to go through all of those many years of public

service.

But I have to tell you, after all of the work that he did in the last 4 years, and as many people retire from the Cabinet and they go back to private life, where they clearly could have a wonderful lifestyle and earn a heck of a lot more money and spend more time with their family, it rather surprised me that he would consent to staying with the Federal Government and going through more of the same that we all go through. And that is people who are not totally happy with your performance and the long hours and missing your family and so on. I think that speaks to the commitment he has to make this a better Nation for all of us-not people just in Colorado, but all of us.

His accomplishments are many. He did just an outstanding job as the mayor of Denver. He literally revitalized a city on the decline. He was responsible for a lot of the groundwork that was developed to build America's newest international airport, DIA. He was not responsible, however, for the baggage problems we had— I want you to know that.

[Laughter.]

Senator CAMPBELL. That is all cleared up now, too, by the way. DIA is one of the most technologically-advanced airports. And the industry construction and economic diversity that happened while he was the mayor, and in the years after he left his office as mayor, had their roots in his efforts while he was in Colorado.

While he was the Secretary of Transportation, in just 31⁄2 years, he streamlined that Department. He has decreased the size of the job force by 11,000 positions, and increased the investments in infrastructure by 10 percent. Over 75 highway projects were speeded up into construction-well, speeded up by 2 or 3 years, in fact, with no additional cost to the taxpayer, because of his leadership.

He orchestrated the first sale of America-made large shipping vessels to a foreign country in 38 years. Air travel was improved. I know in my own town, Durango, I was very dissatisfied, as many Coloradans were, with some of our commuter air service. I went to

Federico and I told him about it. And we got some letters in to him from our constituents in Colorado. I can tell you, anybody that rides that particular airline, Mesa Airline, has noticed a marked increase in performance and an increase in safety. And partly that was because of Federico's personal involvement.

So I know that he will go on, as Secretary of Energy, and do a very, very fine job. And I just wanted to be here with him and tell you that I am absolutely and totally committed to him and supportive of him.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Campbell.
Congressman Skaggs.

STATEMENT OF HON. DAVID E. SKAGGS,

U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM COLORADO

Mr. SKAGGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am really pleased and honored to be here, especially in the company of so many distinguished members of the other body who serve on this committee.

I believe the President has made a particularly distinguished nomination in the case of Federico Peña to serve as Secretary of Energy in this administration. It has been a pleasure for me to be a friend and colleague of his for almost 20 years now. And I do not think I can be any more telling or succinct in my introduction of him to the committee than to simply say he is a distinguished public servant.

I do not know of anyone in public life that is as dedicated to the public good and as unconcerned about his private interests than Federico has been in his service in the State legislature, where we first got to know each other, as mayor of Denver, as Secretary of Transportation. And I am sure that distinguishing aspect of his service will continue as Secretary of Energy.

He is a very, very able man. And I am delighted to be able to participate in his introduction. Even though he has had an occasional detour into executive positions, he retains the heart and soul of a legislator. I think that will serve him well in his efforts to maintain good and forthcoming relationships with this committee, with the Senate, with me and my colleagues in the House.

So it is a pleasure to commend him to you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the time.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Congressman.

Let me begin with my statement, as chairman. I think it is fair to say that the Department of Energy is an agency that has fallen on hard times. It is under assault from all directions. Some have looked at what the Department of Energy has and has not done over the past 16 years, and concluded that it has no right to continue to exist as a Cabinet-level agency. I do not share that view, but that opinion is out there.

Some are going as far to say that you are here today to interview for the position of the captain of the Titanic. I do not think that is the case either.

But, Mr. Peña, you have freely admitted that you are not an expert on energy issues. Your critics have said that your nomination is evidence that the White House really does not care about the De

partment; that it is a throwaway position; that a white flag has gone up over the Forrestal Building.

Soon, you are going to have the opportunity to respond to these criticisms yourself. However, I believe that what we most need in the Department of Energy right now is management and direction, solidarity and true leadership. The Department of Energy has some 13,000 dedicated technical experts, not counting the contractors, who understand how our bombs and the windmills and the solar panels function. What the Department of Energy really needs is leadership, someone who understands how to make things and people work productively, and who is unafraid to take tough positions when it is necessary, and stick to those positions.

What the American public and our economy needs is an effective advocate for reliable and affordable energy and for commonsense energy policies. There is a crying need for an advocate for sound science and the Nation's national energy security when the administration's policies are made. I think this is the challenge, and this is the opportunity, that you have.

America really needs a leader who will not shirk from the responsibility as the Nation's prime energy policy advocate. Americans do not want our energy policy to be set by insiders from special interest groups occupying key administrative positions. We want that job to be done by objective, sound professionals who have years of training and education in their respective fields. The special interest group representative's job is to be an unbending environmental purist in many cases, and your job, if you are confirmed, is to consider our safety, our security and our economic future as well.

Now, as Secretary of Energy, you have the opportunity to do the very best you can to represent the average man and woman of this country, who hopes for affordable electricity to keep warm, a reliable supply of gas to drive the kids to school, and an assurance that those kids will not go to war in the Persian Gulf because our leaders have allowed this dependence on foreign oil sources to climb too high as they are now doing.

So we are here today to find out if you are up to this challenge. We want to know how you, individually, plan to handle the tough problems of the Department of Energy-and there are plenty of them. For example, nuclear waste, an issue that nobody wants to deal with. But the Department of Energy has collected almost $12 billion from America's ratepayers, and spent some $6 billion to address the question of how to dispose of nuclear waste associated with our Nation's nuclear power reactors.

The Department of Energy opposed legislation passed in the Senate last year, that would have allowed this program to achieve results. However, after a court ruled that the Department of Energy has an obligation to begin taking the waste in 1998, the Department of Energy's only response was to send out a letter asking for suggestions on how it could meet that obligation. Well, obviously, we expect those suggestions to come from the Department of Energy.

Mr. Peña, our President, in my personal opinion, has been AWOL on this vital matter of public health and safety. I want to know what you are going to do about it. Why must we continue

stacking high-level radioactive materials at 80 locations in 41 States, near our homes, near our schools? And why are 63 U.S. Senators wrong when they decided it was safer to store those materials in a remote desert location in Nevada, where we have been testing nuclear devices for nearly 50 years?

Last year, the Department of Energy requested $6.6 billion for its environmental management program. Estimates of eventual cleanup costs over the next 75 years have varied widely, from $230 billion to more than a trillion. Despite spending huge amounts of money, very little has actually been cleaned up.

A report commissioned by this committee, under the leadership of Senator Johnston 2 years ago, described the situation at Hanford as a budgetary train wreck alongside the Columbia River. And it has consumed a river of money-since 1989, over $10 billion. I am going to be going up to Hanford and spending next Saturday up there trying to identify their current situation.

We need to have more to show for the money we've expended. Ironically, since Congress started putting the brakes on Federal budget allocations, the situation has somewhat improved. With the flow of money in jeopardy, priorities are finally being set. Disputes among stakeholders have diminished, and better progress in cleanup is finally underway. But it took the Congress to deliver the message that there would be no more business as usual.

It is interesting to note that the opinion of many with regard to Hanford and other DOE sites is that we must put them back to their natural state. Others suggest that there is not enough money in the world to do that. The question is, do we put a fence around these sites? These are answers we are looking to you and the Department to provide. Because there is no use throwing money at the problem if you cannot ultimately achieve what we have directed the Department to do.

There is the area of climate change. The Energy Secretary must be an advocate for reason and balance during the upcoming debate on climate change. While they served in Congress, our Vice President and Tim Wirth pursued, in my opinion, an extreme agenda that would have imposed new energy taxes and new command-andcontrol regulations on the citizens of this country. I think Congress, wisely, defeated their initiatives, just as the Congress defeated the President's proposal, when he first came into office, to establish a Btu tax.

But as Vice President and Under Secretary of State, Al Gore and Tim Wirth are now pursuing their agenda in a new venue-and that venue is the United Nations-as they negotiate a new climate treaty. Even before the first negotiating session was held, the United States agreed to exempt developing nations from any new commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, despite the fact that developing nations will soon surpass the industrialized nations in greenhouse gas emissions.

It is also troubling to me that we continue to hear the claim that climate change science demands urgent action, when testimony of respected scientists before this committee clearly refutes that. One of the most interesting experiments that was going on for some time was the ice coring in Greenland, which indicates what the historical data is on climatic change. For reasons unknown to me, we

seem to have dropped that, because perhaps it was not showing what some people wanted it to show. That is the only explanation I can come up with.

Mr. Peña, the Energy Secretary must not be content to allow the State Department or the United Nations to chart the course of U.S. energy policy. The case has not been made for a new carbon or a Btu tax. Fairness does not allow unilateral action on the part of the United States and a few other countries, while others do little or nothing. Americans are unlikely to accept a U.N. mandate that will dictate what cars we may drive or what fuels we may burn. We expect you to stand up for balance, reason, solid science, and U.S. sovereignty over our energy choices.

And last, but not least, our Nation's dependence on imported energy-specifically, imported oil. Since the establishment of the Department of Energy, our reliance on imported oil has passed 50 percent and is expected to rise to 71 percent by the year 2015. The OPEC countries are steadily regaining lost market share. The U.S. economy appears to be as exposed as it was in the early seventies to supply disruptions and losses from monopoly price structuring in the oil industry.

So, Mr. Peña, we are talking about jobs. We are talking about people's lives. And you and I both know that the Department of Energy has no real plan currently to stop our slide into near complete dependence on foreign sources of oil. I want to know what you are going to do about that, because I believe we are losing our leverage as we become more dependent on imported sources of oil. This committee wants to work with the administration to resolve these problems, but the process has to begin with you, the Secretary of Energy. We want a strong manager and a forceful advocate. You have got to tell us that you are up to the task.

We can accept that you are not an energy expert. What we will not accept is a Department that believes that if it ignores these problems, they will simply go away.

Along with the problems, there are many bright spots. The National Laboratories are an international resource and make essential_contributions to our Nation's economy, as well as its defense. It should be remembered that despite the legacy of pollution left by the weapons complex, the Department of Energy did an outstanding job in equipping our country to fight the Cold War. The Cold War is now over, but the world is still a very dangerous place. The importance of maintaining our country's nuclear deterrent cannot be overemphasized.

In this area, you inherit a legacy of victory. We won the Cold War. Part of the new Secretary's job will be to help keep our economy strong and our Nation secure, so that we will not have to fight future wars.

I plan to work closely with the new Secretary on a number of issues, not the least of which is competitive change in electricity. My view is that the best way to do this is to deregulate where we can, streamline what we cannot deregulate, and empower the States so that they can promote retail competition. This is going to be a monumental task, finding a common ground with the investor-owned private utilities and the public utilities that enjoy government assistance.