The Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development held a hearing to discuss the forecasts for oil and gasoline prices and examine the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) budget request for Fiscal Year 2009. Chairman Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) said that the EIA is a very important organization and that their work is very important to the United States. However, Dorgan could not understand why the EIA’s projections continued to be “way, way, way off” for the past six months. Dorgan also said that he was confused as to why the price of oil and gasoline skyrocketed when nothing fundamentally changed in order to cause this.
Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) said that the U.S. must come up with solutions to increase supply and decrease the demand for oil. Domenici said that the country must produce more energy that it owns now in order to increase domestic supply. He explained that the U.S. is going to move from the crude oil economy it has now to something different, and though this process may take as long as thirty to forty years, it is a “bridge” that the country needs to cross.
Guy Caruso, Administrator for the EIA and U.S. Department of Energy, gave a testimony which focused on recent forecasts for oil prices and the factors that were considered in making these forecasts. Caruso said that since he last testified on this issue in December 2007, crude oil prices have increased from a monthly average of $92 per barrel to more than $135 per barrel. The EIA’s current forecast for crude oil prices is an average of $122 per barrel in 2008 and $126 per barrel in 2009. Caruso explained that there are several factors which combine to cause oil supply to struggle to keep up with demand growth, but also said that market fundamentals – demand, supply, inventories, and spare production capacity – are the primary drivers of global oil prices.
Caruso said that the EIA relies on a number of tools to project crude oil prices, including an econometric model of oil production, inventories, and spare capacity. He said that the EIA continually strives to improve their short-term forecasts. Caruso also said that recent experience with high and rapidly rising oil prices and large deviations of actual prices from forecast values highlight the challengers faced by EIA. He said that it is necessary for the EIA to have access to more data, which is what their Fiscal Year 2009 budget request proposes additional improvements for. However, when Dorgan asked what exactly caused the price of oil to double this past year, Caruso could not offer a good explanation.

Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), House Majority Leader, spoke at a press conference about the American Disabilities Restoration Act. He said that the American court system has slowly chipped away at the rights of the disabled by narrowing the definition of a disability. This bill should broaden the definition of a disability and restore rights to disabled Americans. He said this bill also directs companies to lower the burden of disability. He said that this was an important aspect to ensuring the rights of the disabled.
He said this bill will restore the ADA act to its rightful place in America and Congressman Hoyer said that it is a victory for civil rights. He said that the bill should be through the house by the end of the day. He said that he hopes the Senate will vote soon and President Bush can sign the bill as soon as possible.
He said that since President Bush Sr. signed the bill 18 years ago it has been eroding, offering less and less protection for the disabled. He said that this restoration act should fix that problem.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell says that Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have the same access to military operations and intelligence briefings from the Defense Department if they request briefings through their Senate offices. (1:07)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) says he finds it shocking and shameful that the United States remains the most wasteful nation in the world with respect to energy and that the United States dependence on foreign energy sources stems from its own extravagance. (0:58)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell speaks about the Government Accountability Office report that sided with a protest lodged by Boeing over a government contract for a refueling tanker given to a competitor. Morrell says that the process of this procurement has gone on seven years too long and that the GAO report is holding up the process even further. (0:28)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) hosted a discussion on ‘Torture, Justice and Democracy: Myths and Misconceptions.’ Alice Verghese, a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow and program coordinator for Asia and the Pacific at the International Rehabilitation Council for Victims of Torture, was invited to share her findings on torture particularly in Sri Lanka and the Philippines.
Verghese defined the paradigms of torture as pain and suffering, physical or mental, which is intentionally inflicted by public officials for purposes such as coercion or obtaining information. She attributed the difficulties in obtaining reliable reports on torture to the lack of consistent data collection methods, fragmented responses from those in the field and the secretive nature of torture itself.
Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a human rights specialist at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said that international justice systems are not international criminal bodies and that strengthening democracy at the local level was vital. Madrigal-Boloz also said that making the public aware of torture was ‘an element of healing’ to victims of torture. Dr. Allen Keller, associate professor of medicine at New York University, pointed out that the psychological impact of torture should not be underestimated and that it had much longer lasting effects compared to physical torture.

ABC White House Correspondent Martha Raddatz says President Bush admitted in an interview that he assured the US was winning in Iraq to keep up troop morale when he knew that the US was in fact not. Raddatz continues, saying that she knows she must be cautious in declaring that things are going well or badly in Iraq because the situation can change quickly. (0:38)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

CBS Foreign Affairs Correspondent Kimberly Dozier discussed her experiences in Iraq and her book “Breathing the Fire: Fighting to Report and Surive the war in Iraq” at the Brookings Institution. On Memorial Day 2006 a car bomb nearly killed Dozier in Baghdad when she was on assignment.
Dozier said she encountered many obstacles while reporting in Iraq. She explained that her reports were criticized initially for being too hard on the US military, only to be told after the 2006 election that her stories were not as tough as they should have been. ABC White House Correspondent Martha Raddatz echoed Dozier’s statement that there are still not enough journalists in Iraq and that many stories are not produced due to a lack of manpower.
General Peter Chiarelli said the press plays an important role in Iraq but that it is sometimes too voracious in its quest for news stories. He said it is difficult to diffuse news stories once they are on the wire, recalling an exaggerated piece that overshadowed the seating of the Iraqi legislature. Chiarelli also stated that communication issues are a large problem in Iraq and that the military must undergo a change that places language and cultural education as higher priorities.

The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and Permanent Committee on Intelligence held a hearing to discuss the results of a National Intelligence report that gauged the potential risks global warming and climate change may have on national security from now until 2030.
The report, “National Intelligence Assessment on the National Security Implications of Global Climate Change to 2030”, found both positives and negatives with the outcome of global warming. Dr. Thomas Fingar, deputy director of National Intelligence for Analysis, said that in North America, net cereal crop yields will increase by 5 to 20 percent between now and 2030. Also, the growing season in the U.S. and Canada has extended an average of two days per decade since 1950.
However, the report also found that the global mean annual average temperature has risen 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade during the period 1955 to 2005, which doubles the rate observed from 1906 to 2005. Since 1993, the global sea level has risen 3 mm per year, but for most of the 20th century, it rose only 1.7 mm per year.
Chairman Edward J. Markey asked Dr. Fingar if global warming will multiply existing international problems like “social tension, environmental degradation, and weak political institutions” that seem to be underlying causes of terrorism. Dr. Fingar said that the “laundry list” of problems listed by Chairman Markey resembles the list of “conditions and preconditions” that may lead to alienation and terrorism recruitment.
Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) asked Dr. Fingar what level of confidence he applied to the report. Dr. Fingar said his level of confidence is “low to moderate.”
“There was uncertainty about the climate change projections that we took as the baselines. There was uncertainty about the impact on the individual countries,” Dr. Fingar said. This “cascade of uncertainties” reduced the confidence level.
The report is different than a National Intelligence Estimate because Dr. Fingar and his colleagues depended on open sources and outside expertise. Currently, a portion of the report is classified, but Rep. Pete Hoekstra (D-Mich.) requested that the full report be made public.

The Obama campaign manager Davide Plouffe spoke about the goals and attitude of the Obama campaign as they look toward the fall campaign season. In looking over the electoral map of the 2004 campaign, Plouffe said that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will not hold much sway in the Kerry states. Obama is looking to have more of an offensive campaign and will be campaigning harder in Ohio and Florida then any presidential nominee in history, Plouffe said.
In New Mexico and Colorado the Obama campaign feels they have a significant lead and a big lead with Hispanic voters, 60 percent more saying they will vote democratically then in 2004, Plouffe said. The “west is a place of enormous opportunity for us,” Plouffe said, while the Midwest will be the battleground states. Many independent voters who self identify with democrats are growing and will be the votes that the campaign is fighting for.
The Obama campaign has several goals it is looking to focus on and accomplish my November: having a historically high African American turnout and a high turnout with voters under 40, register people to vote, help elect democrats down the ballot and to build grassroots organizations in every state. The state by state grassroots organizations will give the campaign a “persuasion army” to pull independents and others to vote for Obama.