Washington DC -  Huddling around a candle-lit table is how most of us pass the eerie hours of a blackout.  During storms, when the lights flicker or go out, we strike a match and light a candle to comfort our children and to share time as a family. 

As vital as our power infrastructure is to homeland security, our local and national economies, and our American way of life, it is still not secure enough.  In Congress, we should be more concerned about keeping the lights on.

As the House and Senate reconvene next week, the eyes of farmers, ranchers, and rural Americans should be on how the Senate proceeds with debate on a comprehensive energy policy. 

My colleagues in the House of Representatives and I have already finalized our version of the energy bill, which would diversify and stabilize the resources America relies upon to meet energy needs.  But this issue must be revisited, because in November, the Senate fell three votes short of being able to bring the bill up for a vote.

The energy bill is a vital proposal to reform the way we produce, consume, and even think about energy – from the gasoline in our cars to the crops in our fields to the electricity in our homes.

Gasoline prices are climbing across the nation, and spiking in some places.  Just last week, the Association of Oil Producing Nations, also known as OPEC, announced they would cut production of oil by 2.5 million barrels of oil per day in coming months.  The high and uncertain costs of fuel are tough on the budgets of families and businesses alike. 

Right now, America imports 53 percent of the oil we use, and by 2020, the Energy Information Agency expects that figure to rise to 64 percent.  America’s present problem with unstable gasoline prices is largely the result of unpredictable production by a cartel of oil-rich nations.  Congress must find, promote, and fund alternative sources of fuel to secure our energy independence.  We must do it first at home.

The Missouri farmer figures heavily into the solution proposed in this energy bill.  Ethanol, soy diesel, and biofuels are already in use on farms across America.  Our challenge is to expand the role of these renewable, value-added agricultural products on American highways.  Incentives for the production of these fuels will keep supply high, not prices.

Two pleasant side effects of ethanol and other fuel additives like it are the extra support for corn and soybean prices and the jobs created in local production facilities.  These value-added products can stimulate our local economies and help bring economic recovery to rural America in the form of much-needed jobs.  Certainly, some years are difficult for agricultural producers – but gas rations are a more recent memory than grain rations; and high prices for oil are far more detrimental to our economy than high prices for corn.

We must look within our borders for the solution to this crisis.  Sensitive, sophisticated, and exploratory drilling of America’s oil and natural gas reserves is a necessary part of our energy future.  We must also rely on American innovation for new and efficient technologies to increase our secure supply of power.

When the lights go out in the Northeast or California, it doesn’t necessarily affect us in Southern Missouri.  The catastrophes remind us, however, of the problems of relying on deregulated electricity (a good thing) traveling on an outdated, unreliable national grid (a bad thing).  Much of the electricity we use in Southern Missouri is transmitted hundreds of miles on this grid.  This bill improves the infrastructure carrying that electricity to make it more reliable for the farms, towns, and cities that dot our region of the Heartland.
 We also lost power for a significant amount of time in parts of Missouri last year.  That incident near Rolla, a fire, would not have been prevented by a better national energy policy, but alternative sources of energy, better preparedness for outages, and decentralized sources of power all could have helped.

In the end, our national energy policy should reflect a great change in America’s outlook on our future.  Self-sufficiency is critical when the topic is energy, and Americans only stand to gain by looking for fuel in the cornfield rather than in the oil field. 

So next time the lights go out in Missouri or you see gas prices climbing again, the short term answer is the matchbox and candle in your hall closet, but the long term solution is a bill in Congress.  This legislation can reform our antiquated system and bring a new philosophy of energy production to Missouri.  Now wouldn’t that be enlightening?