there's a lot of issues that have to do with rail -- >> it can be transported safely in your -- >> yes, yes, absolutely. and they are in many other countries. >> can i ask if you would put something in writing about that? >> sure. >> for us? because i'm very interested in this. now the votes have started. we call on senator bozeman. >> thank you, madam chair. thank both of you for being here. we appreciate your willingness to serve, dr. macfarlane, and we also appreciate your service, commissioner, and your willingness to get back into this. dr. macfarlane, the question's come up about trying to get our safety issues resolved in five years. and we're all part of the bureaucracy up here. what do you see as some of the pitfalls in actually getting that done? i assume that you're committed to doing that in five years. but what's lurking out there that you see that might be a problem? i've had road projects that have taken longer than that to get approval. >> certainly. thank you for the question, senator.

i'm still learning exactly all of the different aspects of what the nrc is planning to do and has requested of the licensees. i understand that it will take two outages to go through and fulfill the orders that have been issued. these outages occur every 18 to 24 months and that's part of this five-year time frame. the first outage to try to understand, especially with placing vents, where they could be placed, how they would be done, and the second outage is actually doing it. so that's part of it. so those are some of the issues. >> okay. the former chairman used tactics like simply not voting or delaying votes on, oh, decisions with licensing and things for plants. can you assure us that you won't use those kind of tactics?

>> i -- certainly. >> thank you very much. i yield back. >> thank you. senator gillibrand, welcome. >> obviously we've had many lessons learned because of the fukushima accident. two things i'm particularly concerned for new york i'd like your thoughts on. first, in the area of exemptions, license amendments, renewals and waivers, given that we give licenses for up to 20 years, given that many waivers and exemptions have been given, and given the technology's improving very rapidly, have you given any consideration to relooking at these current rules and guidelines in terms of timing? because i think given what we've learned from fukushima, we may want to have license renewals have shorter time periods, we may want to create a mechanism whereby waivers can be relooked at given what we've learned. second, with new york specifically, we have indian

point. i know, dr. macfarlane, you have some expertise in geology. do you plan to look at things like potentially active fault lines, what the risks are, what can be done to protect these existing sites? and then last, also highly relevant to the new york issue, have you given consideration to relooking at issues of evacuation for large-scale populations, making sure that there is such a plan for that kind of large evacuation, if there uz dalgts objector -- is damage or emergency situation? >> thank you for the question, senator. in terms of license renewals, et cetera, i think that is very important to periodically review lessons learned from the process, and i believe that the nuclear regulatory commission has done this and is doing this in this case. in terms of indian point and assessing seismic risks, there has been a new seismic hazard

analysis that the u.s. geologic survey has issued. i think it's important for all reactors to go and assess the new analysis. and i would certainly be interested in following that issue vis a vis reactors and specifically with indian point in mind. then in terms of looking at the issues around evacuating people, thinking about indian point, i do believe that under the activities that the nrc is undertaking regarding the fukushima accident, that they are reconsidering the emergency planning zones and looking at that as well. and i would definitely follow that up as well. >> senator, i don't have too much to add to what dr. macfarlane said except that as a specific action post-fukushima, all nuclear power plants including indian point have been ordered to do a seismic re-evaluation. so that has already been -- that requirement has been imposed by the commission. and again, as dr. macfarlane

said, the evacuation and emergency planning issues are also under re-evaluation by the nrc staff. >> thank you, senator. i'm going to close with a couple of points and then rush off. so if i don't thank you both, i will now do that. there is something i need to do in order to make sure that these nominations can go forward. would you both be ready to answer these questions? do you agree if confirmed to appear before this committee or designated members of this committee and other appropriate committees of the congress and provide information subject to appropriate and necessary security protection with respect to your responsibilities, answer yes or. >> yes. >> yes. >> do you agree to ensure the testimony, briefings, documents, electronic and other forms of communication or information -- of information are provided to this committee and its staff and other appropriate committees in a timely manner? >> yes. >> yes. >> last, do you know of any matters which you may or may not have disclosed that might place you in any conflict of interest

if you are confirmed? >> no. >> no. >> all right. record will show those answers. senators' questions are due at noon tomorrow, nominees' answers are due monday at noon, we're trying to move this forward. so my couple of last parting questions are, i asked my staff to put together a list of the -- what does this nuclear waste contain? now, chairman, you're expert at this and chairman-to-be, and commissioner, i know you're an expert at this too. so i looked at some of the half-lifes here and they said, well, neptunium-27 has a half-of 2.1 million years. plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,100 years. would you agree with this and do you agree that when you're dealing with this waste, it is very, very serious business? commissioner? >> yes, chairman. >> yes, of course.

>> all right. and my last -- i have two more points. after the three mile island accident, the nrc chairman's duties were really changed. and they were strengthened. and the chairman became not only known as the chairman but the principal executive officer of the commission who directs, and i quote, the day-to-day operation of the agency and the nrc's response to nuclear emergencies. are you aware of this law? >> yes, chairman. >> okay. and will you respect the role of the chairman? >> yes, i will. >> even when she may not agree with you? >> yes, absolutely. >> and when she does agree with you? >> yes. >> i would ask our hopefully future chairman, if confirmed, do you understand this authority and will you exercise it if necessary? >> absolutely. >> because i think that's key. there was such confusion over that after fukushima and the arguments went back and forth. and the last point is, i'm really glad senator inhofe put

page 33 of commissioner svinicki's answers about yucca into the record. because here it goes. senator boxer, so you didn't work directly on yucca? answer, i did not. i don't believe that's true. when i don't vote for you, commissioner, it's because i have reasons that go with my view of your candor or lack of same. and also the record in terms of safety. i hope and i truly pray that this commission, with your leadership and yours, can get off on a different -- in a different direction. we can have the deepest divisions of opinion. this is america. that's what we're known for. we don't agree on things but we have decent relationships with each other. and i just really want to underscore that. as one day we had all the commissioners here and the chairman and i said, you should

all go out after work and have a beer, soda, something. and, you know, they all looked at me like, what planet was i on for that to even be possible? that's got to be possible. it could be tea or coffee. could be anything. but you get my point. and so dr. macfarlane, you're walking into a tough situation. but honestly, after meeting with you and watching you here today, i sense in you the ability to bring people together. and i know as a mom myself, you've got to do that a lot around the house. as well as in the workplace. so i think you're going to bring a different touch. i think it's necessary. and i would say, commissioner svinicki, i hope as a long time member of this commission, and despite my opposition, i know that you're going to be confirmed to this. i hope you will do your best to

help our new chairman find her way. and if there's disagreement, let's not make it personal, let's not make it some kind of vendetta one to the other. let's just bring those disagreements out to the fore, and recognize that's how this country is. we are great because we allow that debate. we certainly do it here in the senate. and we can go out for a cup of coffee afterwards. so i hope that will happen. i am very, very pleased that you're both here today, that we had such an important hearing, that it was so civil. and i'm just feeling good today and i'll feel even better when we get the highway bill done. thank you very much. we stand adjourned.

senate armed services committee john mccain has called for air strikes in syria. today he leads a discussion about the ongoing violence there. watch the discussion live at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 3. tomorrow, jpmorgan chase ceo jamie dimon testifies before the house financial services committee about the recent $2 billion trading loss. the committee will look at the consequences of the trading loss on the u.s. economy. that's live tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span 3.

recently, senate finance committee chairman max baucus said reforming the tax code could raise revenue and reduce the federal deficit. he emphasized that the tax code is an important driver of energy policy. because of the ongoing presidential campaign, he suggested that tax reform will have to wait until after the november presidential elections. this is about two hours. we come to order. the writer hunter thompson once wrote, anything worth doing is worth doing right. i couldn't agree more. our country is at a pivotal moment in energy policy. it's important redo it -- we do it right. there have never been so many important energy options. they're worth doing and worth doing right. thankfully, we're making progress, diversifying our energy portfolio and we have an

opportunity through tax reform to driver that progress further. when i first ran for congress, america was reeling from an oil embargo. gas prices had doubled and at one point in 1974 20% of gas stations had no fuel at all. it's clear we could never again allow america to be so dependent on a single source of energy. since then we have boosted a more diverse, efficient and productive energy policy. advances in technology mean more domestic oil and natural gas are available than ever before and we also have more renewable, clean energy sources and we can do more. we're still, i think, too reliant on fossil-based energy sources. 94% of the energy used in the transportation sector comes from oil. only 10% of the electricity consumption is generated from renewable or clean energy resources. our country needs a diverse

energy sector like we have in my home state of montana, let me brag a little bit. we are an energy state. we are one of a dozen states that produce more energy than we consume. in eastern montana, next to north dakota, my colleague to my right knows this all too well because there is greater formation in north dakota than it is in montana. our oil and gas fuels are going through a renaissance. technology has unleashed its own gas potential and created thousands of jobs. in central montana, wind turbine blades harness the power of the chinook winds. wind farms in montana power 100,000 homes and three new wind farms are being built and in western montana, it adds electricity to the grid. montana also produces 4 million to 5 million tons of sulfur and we're leading the way on carbon capture and sequestration.

national energy policy should replicate a lot of this mix. if we don't develop u.s. energy policy we'll continue the subject to the whims of foreign dictators in the sudden spikes of foreign oil. we'll be one hurricane or regime change away from $6 gasoline. that would be disastrous for our economy. the $1 increase in the price of gasoline cost americans $110 billion a year. we are all too aware of that in our state. the tax code is an important driver of energy policy. tax incentives, as i mentioned provide 85% of the energy sector's federal support. these provisions cover every conceivable form of energy, nuclear, oil, gas, coal, wind, solar and geothermal. tax provisions also cover a wide variety of energy use from home appliances to running massive

factories, but these incentives could be improved. currently the type and level of tax incentives varies for different technologies. some incentives are temporary. others permanent. in some cases there are multiple incentives for the same technology, resulting in inefficiency. provisions that don't create jobs and improve the energy policy should expire or be repealed. we're providing select incentive, and perhaps we should adopt a more technology-neutral approach and stop playing favorites. >> that way, we can still help new energy technology develop, but let the market decide which ones stick. tax reform is an opportunity for the energy sector to make real progress. it could move us further from foreign oil, can lead us down a road to a diverse, clean and secure energy resource. so let us seize the opportunity

as we develop domestic energy. let's also focus on efficiency and try to make the code less complex and use the tax reform to ensure our country has a more secure and divorce energy supply and as mr. thompson wrote, let us find the things worth doing, worth doing right. senator hatch? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank the chairman for holding a critical hearing on tax reform. we've had a large number of these hearings and they've been very helpful and especially if we're going into this next year and the remaining part of this year. it is essential that we continue these discussions in pursuit of reforming a tax code which is complicated, unfair and difficult to administer. we cannot afford as a nation a tax code that prevents our full potential for economic growth. looking at the witnesses, it's clear that we have a good representation of the different

view points of the energy sources addressed throughout the tax code itself. my hope is that this hearing will contribute to our goal of comprehensive tax reform in the near future. it is important to conduct our examination today with president reagan's three criteria for tax reforms as our guide post. we'll be looking at the fairness of the system. we will be looking at the efficiency of the system with the particular emphasis on its anti-growth features and we'll be looking at the complexity of the current tax code. if we keep these principles in mind, i am optimistic that this committee will be in a position to reform our tax code in a way that is better for families, businesses and our economy. i know many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle hope to achieve a tax reform that lowers rates while broadening the tax base. however from my perspective it will be efficient for any successful tax reform.

tax reforms should be about tax reform, not about deficit reduction. we should be simplifying our tax code and lowering rates to create a more fair system that generates the economic growth necessary to generate jobs and revenue itself. it would be a mistake to call tax increases tax reform and use that increased revenue to achieve deficit reduction rather than pro-growth rate reductions. today we're focusing on what role, if any, energy policy should play in the tax code. energy policy has been creeping into the tax code at an exponential rate. yesterday i heard the chairman compare the tax code to the hydra, the 100-headed creature of greek mythology. each time you cut off one head, two more grow back. i believe this analogy is particularly apt with respect to energy tax provisions. i hope today we could have an open debate about whether going forward there was a role for energy policy in the tax code

and if so, what that role should be. i could keep talking, but there is no tax incentive for producing hot air, so i'll let the witnesses get to it. thank you again, mr. chairman. i look forward to hearing from our panel here today. >> thank you, senator. it is now my honor to introduce our panel. especially honored to introduce our first witness. don nickels, chairman and ceo of the nickels group, but for 24 years represented the great state of oklahoma, a valuable member of this committee, and i welcome you back, tom. it is great seeing you, and i particularly remember your incisive, persistent and perceptive points of view. i really appreciate that. next is honorable phil sharp. phil is currently the president of resources for the future and for 20 years represented indiana's second district in the

u.s. house. as a matter of fact, phil and i were freshmen in the house of the watergate class of 1974. very fond memories of that and especially of you, phil when you had a sharp fist, no pun intended with the members of the group. our third, dr. dale jorgenson, he's a samuel w. morris professor of economics at harvard. as it turns out dr. jorgenson and i are fellow alumni, same high school from helena, montana, and former chairman of this committee, bill roth, is an alumnus from that same high school. there are three of us and it's a good school. two years in a row we didn't make the state championship in football but we were runners-up two years in a row. >> and we had a great basketball team, though. >> back in your era they won. they won the championships and that is true. thank you.

finally have mr. harold hamm. chairman of continental resources, a position he served in since its inception in 1967. thank you all for coming very much and you all know our practice, i assume you do. certainly you do, don. speak for about five, six minutes, everyone utilizing and all of your statements will be inserted in the record. go ahead, don. glad to have you here. let her rip. i tell all witnesses, pull no punches and tell it like it is. life's short, you can't take it with you. go for it. >> mr. chairman, thank you. it's a pleasure for me to be on the panel and join my colleagues on the panel, especially harold hamm, who has built one heck of a company in oklahoma, continental resources, and doing so much in north dakota and montana but also in oklahoma and they've added hundreds and hundreds of jobs and a lot of valuable resources to this country, so it's a pleasure to join him as well. mr. chairman, you mentioned

talking about tax reform and doing it right. i remember being in this body and particularly this committee and in my 24 years in the senate i love this committee. this committee and those that got on it and it takes a long time to get on the committee, but it's a great committee and you're doing really great work and especially if the senate works and so i'm a big advocate for regular order and marking up and that's the tradition of this committee. it's marking up bills and having lots of amendments and lots of debate and we did that on countless bills. i remember in some of the best time in my service in the senate was when we had tax bills and we considered hundreds and hundreds of amendments in the committee and/or on the floor, so i urge you in the process portion of this, whether you're talking about extenders, whether you're talking about trying to avoid the calamity of the end of this year, beginning of next year, or restructuring the tax code, regular order is the process,

and that way the senate works and it makes the senate such a special place to be. you also mentioned doing it right and you talk about energy taxation and i ran for senate because of the windfall profits tax. if congress hadn't passed that in '79 i wouldn't have been here, but it motivated me and i was a state senator at the time, but i disagreed with that so strongly. so when i say do it right i think we're talking about good tax policy and good tax policy is good economics, makes sense. you don't have to pick winners. windfall profits tax discouraged domestic production, encouraged imports. how absurd. we finally got rid of it, but it was a terrible idea. there are some other bad ideas that are out there. the administration talked about let's do away with idcs. they had a comment in their statement saying that idcs, expensing of idcs like other oil and gas preferences, the administration proposed

repeal to storage markets by encouraging more gas under neutral system to the expensing of oil production of gas to the long-term energy security and inconsistent with the administration's policy of reducing carbon emission. what a crazy statement. crazy statement. good tax policy allows expensing certainly of wages. mostly intangible drilling costs for wages. with the tax code you should allow any industry that, and it's expensing. you ought to be able to expense that. so i defend that. so they also call 199 a subsidy to big oil. hogwash. i was on the committee when we created section 199 and the lower corporate rate for manufacturers and some of you may remember i was a manufacturer before coming to

the senate, but i argued against it and i still think it's bad policy, and i think it ought to have a uniform and there was a uniform corporate tax rate and not lower rate for manufacturers versus service companies or other companies. it's very confusing. very difficult and then in past law, we said well, all manufacturers get it except for oil, we're not going to give them the full benefit of the section 199 which is basically a three-point reduction in corporate rate. big oil and i guess a couple of points of it, but it's bad policy so i urge you to have a uniform corporate rate and i might mention, too, there are some companies that have both. they are manufacturers, they're financial companies, they're one and the same. they have both. so then they have all of this accounting challenge trying to figure out what is what. when you're trying to come up with a more uniform, lower, more competitive rate and i think

everybody, democrats and republicans are talking about that, god bless you, keep it up. a lower rate, a more competitive rate and a competitive international rate which probably means going to a territorial system makes good, common sense and to eliminate deductions, exemptions and credits along the way and not deductions but exemptions and credits makes sense. tax all income once and we have a lot of income that's not taxed so you can help lower the rate by doing so. there's also a proposal eliminating dual capacity. i'll just say if you want to have u.s. headquartered oil companies, if you eliminate that, you're going to double tax their foreign earnings and as a result of that, net result is totale, british petroleum, other foreign countries are going to be winning all the international deals. and that would just really be a dumb thing for us to do and very short-sighted and i could go on, mr. chairman, and i just think making good tax policy isn't

good energy policy, it's good tax policy. good tax policy would apply to all industries and i would encourage the committee to advance its work. i compliment the committee to do it and i encourage you for as much as can be done this year to avoid the end year challenges and for totally reforming the system, i encourage you along that way. i think it's very exciting and hopefully you will be successful. this committee, for it to be successful this committee has to lead, and i hope and pray that you do. >> thank you, don. i'd like to have you back. >> thank you. >> you'd be a great addition to this committee. congressman? >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i'm delighted to be here and i must quickly say that i was head of resources for the future and it's an independent think tank and non-partisan and non-lobby organization and the people in it are a lot smarter than i am so these are strictly my

comments from my experience and on a variety of commissions as well as here in the house of representatives. let me quickly say that my plan is to provide a few contextual things about where we are in public policy on energy as well as where the markets are. this committee, many of you are way ahead on these issues and this is probably not particularly relevant but i think it's very important to the public discussion that we try to get a better perspective on what really goes on with energy policy and with our markets. let me say, obviously, as everyone here knows, energy is absolutely essential to our modern economy and to any economic growth that we want to have. it also has implications for our national security and it also has consequences for health, safety and the environment, and our practical problem is there is no policy, there's no set of policies, that will serve all of these goals, so we're always in conflict and it comes right here into this committee and everywhere over it and frankly, the american people and others sh