Mr. Coburn: thank you. I have had a good time listening to the debate on the amendment I filed and visiting with senators.

I think there is an important distinction that needs to be made in the arguments that have been brought forward.

The first is we have a mandated level of ethanol that has to be produced and blended into gasoline, and it grows from now on. There will be zero job losses if this amendment is improved.

The second thing is my colleague, and I love him to death, from South Dakota says we're going to save $1 billion. We can save $3 billion.

If we eliminate the VEETC blending subsidy. Now, why should we do that?

Here's a subsidy that goes to all the blenders of gasoline in the united states, all of them, and they all have called and written and said, we don't want the $3 billion for the rest of the year. We don't want it.

We actually have a letter here from the national petrochemical and refiners association, which they're all members of, saying we don't want this money.

So the best way to get money against the deficit is to not give money to people who don't want it on something that's already mandated anyway.

I spent a great deal of time listening to my colleague from Iowa, Senator Grassley, and his figures were very good. But they were only up through 2008.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 40% of last year's corn crop was utilied -- converted to ethanol. Now, why would the American Bankers Association, the American Frozen Food Institute, the American Meat Institute, California Dairies, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the International Dairy Foods Association, the Milk Producers Council, the National Chicken Council, the National Council of Chain Restaurants, the National Meat Association, the National Restaurant Association, the National Turkey Federation, the National Wildlife Federation, which is only a third of the people who are endorsing this. Why would they be for this?

Because it's not just less than 3% the cost of food. It has been -- this last year -- the significant driver. 65 a bushel. They are two and a half times what they were three and a half years.

I'm not against the farmer and I am for ethanol. I don't want to do away with ethanol blending. I don't want to do away with ethanol as an substitute.

But we have a way to get same amount of ethanol produced and wput into our cars without spending $3 billion between now $8 billion is what it's averaged over the last few years.

We spent $34 billion of money we didn't have subsidizing something that's mandated. I mean, it even goes beyond the Reagan quote, which is a

government view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases.

"If it keeps moving, tax it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."

We have the incentive to blend in ethanol. That by insentive is you by law have to blend it. They don't have a choice.

So we're going to use ethanol in this country. Now, another factor that the American people ought to take into consideration, when you go buy a gallon of fuel today, you 72 worth of subsidy in there, and that doesn't have anything to do with oil and gas drilling.

That has to do with the subsidies that go through all these programs for ethanol. And I'm for using cellulosic.

I'm actually for using corn ethanol. I just don't think we ought to pay twice for it.

I think we ought to pay once.

The number that the Senator from Minnesota talked about in terms of subsidies, there are -- I have worked on the president's commission on debt, I have worked with the gang of six.

You can't be for changing the tax code to get rid of tax expenditures and vote against this amendment. I mean, how do you explain -- here's one that we don't need the incentive for and we're going to pay for and yet you want to say you want to solve the problems of the country, but the first time we have a vote to really eliminate one that will make no difference in terms of the amount of ethanol that's produced in this country, it will just cave us $3 billion, you can't be on both sides of that issue.

Let me address the oil and gas industries for a minute. They get accelerated depreciation and write-off.

That's true. And that amounts to taking legitimate business expenses and saying you can write them off sooner.

Why did we do that? And this started in 1903, by the way. That's when we started it. We started it because it's a capital-intensive business, in terms of the exploration.

It's associated with a lot of dry holes. Now, the very companies that we say we want to take some of their -- quote -- "subsidies, there is a big difference between a subsidy that is a tax credit and allowing somebody advanced depreciation because they are going to get to write it off anyway.

The net effect of the federal government's revenue if you take all those away is still zero.

The federal government doesn't get any additional money because under accounting standards, they get to write off those expenses anyway.

They just don't get to write them off as fast. So the body has already chosen to not do that because they are a -- because there are legitimate business expenses.

We are not saying take away legitimate business expenses from the ethanol distilleries or the blenders.

We're just saying don't pay them money for something they are going to have to do anyhow that they have already said to us they don't want.

And tomorrow during the debate on this, I will add to the record the statement from the national petrochemical and refiners association.

The other point I would make, there is no question we're not energy independent, and there is no question that biofuels and cellulosic ethanol can contribute to what our results can be in terms of maintaining that independence.

But we're the only nation in the world where we as citizens own more oil and gas than canada, china and saudi arabia combined and our government won't let us have it.

Now, think about that for a minute.

According to the congressional research service, there is more oil, gas and gas liquids on tap in the united states than is known in all of canada, all of china and all of saudi arabia combined.

So the reason we're in trouble and importing oil is because our own government won't let us have our own resources. Why would we continue that?

That's a debate for another time no matter what we believe in terms of green energy, what we do know is that we're 30 years away from getting away from carbon-based fuels at the earliest.

And so we can either pay a price or we can buy from the saudis or buy from other marino countries or we can develop our own. And you talk about jobs, the estimate is if we would truly go after our own energy, we would generate over 100,000 jobs a year the next ten years in the oil and gas industry in this country.

Cleanly.

The other comment I've heard is that this amendment wasn't brought up properly. Let me talk about something for a minute.

When the senator from South Dakota and myself came to the senate, the first two years, you could offer an amendment on anything on any bill at any time.

Because that's the way the senate was intended to operate. That you had as a senator, a member of this body, you had the right to offer an amendment.

Now, you may lose it or you may get tabled, but you had the right to offer it. That's not a majority's prerogative. That's the prerogative of any individual senator that you ought to cherish and protect.

Because if the majority leader is the only one that can decide when amendments -- what amendments get offered and when they get offered, this is no longer the u.s. senate.

It's no longer an ability to offer what is in the best interests of our country or our constituents. And the very fact that we don't want to have amendments, controversial amendments that we have much disagreement on coming to the floor because we don't want to have to go home and defend it or we don't want to vote on it because we might lose it, the senate ought to be a free place to offer ideas and get them voted down.

In my first two years of the senate, I had tons of amendment voted down. In fact, I had every amendment voted down.

There wasn't an amendment I won. But I had the freedom to offer the amendments. You know what?

We passed ten times as much legislation in that congress than we have the last two.

So limiting amendments is not the prerogative of the majority leader. Deciding what bills come to the floor is the prerogative of the majority leader. And if we want to go home and tell our constituents that we voted against saving $3 billion, that we're going to borrow 40% of it from outside this country because we don't like the way an amendment was bught up, how else do you think up an amendment if you can in the U.S. Senate?

Every true and proper procedure was followed in bringing this amendment up, and had this amendment been allowed to come up, if other members hadn't objected to it, we would never have used cloture to bring an amendment up.

You shouldn't have to use cloture to bring an amendment up. You should be able to bring any amendment you want up and let senators have the courage to vote the way they want on it.

Rather than to say I'm going to hide behind not having to vote, so I'm going to object to having to vote on an amendment. If we start down that process, we're never going to have any amendments and every amendment is going to end up having to have 60 votes just to be brought up.

Because if we're going to move to that procedure -- and I know procedure in this body pretty well -- then I will insist that we do it all the time.

That will dead stop the senate. So the idea that you can hide behind the excuse that even though you want to save the the $3 billion but you don't like the way the amendment was brought up is a pretty flimsy excuse to go home and explain to your public that you think we shouldn't ever have cloture motions on amendments.

We ought to be able to bring any amendment up at any time. And I see the majority leader coming to the floor. He's a dear friend of mine.

He has the hardest job in washington. There is no question.

But the privilege to bring an amendment to the floor ought to be protected for both sides of the aisle, and you vote it down, you table it, but you do something with it.

Let me --et me just finish by saying I agree this is supposed to expire at the end of this year. I hope it does because we don't need it.

Our corn farmers don't need it. The worldwide demand for corn is high. We're going to continue to produce ethanol. We have a federally mandated requirement that we produce ethanol.

This amendment doesn't touch that, never intended to touch that. But ethanol as a fuel should be processed to the next stage which is methanol, because methanol is not water soluble and it has the same octane rating as gasoline.

Ethanol is not a great fuel. It's not an economical fuel, but we can take that same carbon atom and add to it and create methanol from corn and get a much better fuel that can be transported much easier and have a much greater effect on our economy and have much better gas mileage and less effect on the engines and drive trains and all the other smog prevention that we have on automobiles today.

So let me say it again. I'm not against using biocrops. I'm for biocrops. I'm not against cellulosic ethanol, I'm not against ethanol, I'm not against algae.

But exxonmobil has spent a couple billion of their own money on algae-based biofuels without the government's help, which is one of the points of thismendment. We no longer need to help.

We no longer need to spend this money. So as we debate tomorrow, I look forward to the debate. I will be on the floor all day to answer questions and to debate the pros and cons of this amendment, and I thank the senate for the time and I yield the floor.