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            Young is the Ranking Member on the Natural Resources Committee, which began marking up the bill today.  The mark-up is scheduled to continue on Tuesday, October 23^rd, beginning at 9 a.m. in 1324 Longworth HOB.

“I want to thank the Chairman for postponing the mark-up of this bill at my request.  Yesterday, I had the distinct honor and privilege of traveling to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, to welcome 586 members of the Alaska Army National Guard’s 3^rd Battalion, 297^th Infantry back to the United States.  The guardsmen have been successfully serving as security forces in northern Kuwait and southern Iraq since October 2006, guarding camps and convoys heading into Iraq.  They are comprised of residents from 80 different communities across Alaska including Anchorage, Fairbanks, Kodiak, Soldotna, Kenai, Nome and many Native villages.

“Mr. Chairman, we owe these young men and women our unqualified support in their mission, and I feel nothing but gratitude and tribute whenever I have the privilege of being with these American heroes. 

“On the way back, I was thinking about their mission and the reasons why their growing success there is so important to our Republic.  We are there because, among other things, the region is home to the world’s largest discovered energy supplies that make life as we know it on Earth possible.

“And as proud as I am of their selfless dedication to their nation and to all of us, I couldn’t help but think that I would much rather have those 586 Alaskans working to develop our own energy resources in ANWR, or the Outer Continental Shelf, or the National Petroleum Reserve, or our world’s largest supplies of oil shale, or the coal fields of Appalachia right here at home, than returning from a mission abroad. 

“When I hear ‘No Blood For Oil’, I agree.  We should pull our own weight by using our own resources.  Which brings us to your bill, Mr. Chairman. 

“I have heard from many in industry that we need a bill that will give them certainty, when it is this Committee’s actions that are causing them uncertainty.  We seem to have forgotten that the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ that Franklin Delano Roosevelt built consisted of the mines and the energy and the factories that produced the Fire and Brimstone that our brave troops used to defeat the evils of the National Socialist Parties of Germany, Italy and Japan.

“Somehow, it is as though we have entered a time that, despite increasing competition abroad, we have decided it is time to sit down and take a rest - and not produce energy, not produce timber, and not produce minerals. 

“Our competitors are not resting.  This week’s Chinese Communist Party meeting disclosed that their Gross Domestic Product has doubled in five years.  And they will do it again.  They are scouring the world for resources.  We are making it tougher to produce our own. 

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