Motion to Instruct Conferees on H.R. 4297, Tax Relief Extention Reconciliation Act of 2005
MOTION TO INSTRUCT CONFEREES ON H.R. 4297, TAX RELIEF EXTENSION RECONCILIATION ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - April 26, 2006)
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Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Washington, and I join with the distinguished gentlemen from Washington and Michigan, and I associate myself with their remarks.
I thank Representative McDermott for bringing forward a practical, pragmatic and effective solution that joins with the Senate in recognizing what we can do immediately to rectify this situation.
I say to my colleague from California who receives letters from the elderly, I would like to give him the scores of my e-mails and letters from the elderly who make daily choices between heating and cooling their homes; providing themselves with transportation money that they need to get back and forth to their doctors for their appointments, where they then, because of this administration and Republican control of Congress, have to become refugees of their own health care system and travel to Canada in order to get prescription drugs. If ever there was a need for relief and a focus on a matter that needs urgent attention, it is here in this pragmatic proposal that has been put forward.
You have to be aghast when you look at the policy. At least the President has come forward and recognized apparently what our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have not, that there is a need to roll back these excessive tax cuts. He stated so yesterday. We applaud him for that.
But we are confounded by an administration policy that Thomas Friedman best described in terms of its international perspective as ``leave no mullah behind.'' We find ourselves in the confounding situation where we see profits going abroad to the very nations, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Sudan, who in turn fund the madrassas and fund the very people that are working against our men and women in the field and serving this country so valiantly.
Here at home the domestic policy becomes ``leave no oil executive behind.'' In the reports that come out daily, CEOs are granted $400 million, while we cut LIHEAP provisions to the very needy in the Northeast and across this great Nation of ours, people who are struggling to make ends meet. ``Leave no oil executive behind'' becomes the hue and cry we hear from the other side of the aisle.
In my district, and as I am sure everyone did going home this past week, in talking to a number of people, most notably rock-rib Republicans like John Mitchell, the former mayor of South Windsor, who happens to be the past president of the Independent Connecticut Petroleum Dealers.
He said to me, John, you know I care deeply about the people that are being impacted daily by these costs. And he says, I got to tell you, I have been in business for more than 30 years, and I have never witnessed anything like this before.
He said, I have been a Republican all my life. He says, but I will be damned if I am going to stand by and watch what is happening to this country and watch what is happening at the gas pumps and what is happening to home heating oil.
He said, there is no reason. There are no corollary between supply and demand that is going on here. He says, what this amounts to is nothing more than fear and arbitrarily raising prices based on greed.
I was further joined by Gene Gilford, the executive director, who also had the same thing to say with respect to what is going on here.
Mr. McDermott has proposed very logical amendments, amendments that the Senate has already embraced that make sense, that only go a small way in terms of the help that we need. Other measures that the Democrats have put forward wait for brave Republicans to come forward and sign discharge petitions so that we can even have an open and honest debate about the escalating prices at the gas pump, and what is happening to our senior citizens and all of our citizens across this country as they deal with the high cost of heating and cooling their homes this past winter and as we approach yet another summer season.
So I ask my colleagues on the other side to join us in supporting this measure. Embrace your President, and provided an opportunity to join the very practical and pragmatic provisions that Mr. McDermott has put forward, and then join in signing with Mr. Stupak and others in the vote for the Free Act and the Pump Act that Democrats have been proposing.
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