Rising Gas Prices

Floor Speech

RISING GAS PRICES -- (Senate - May 09, 2007)

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, yesterday I came to the floor with the Senator from Arizona and the senior Senator from Texas to talk about rising gas prices. The sticker shock at the pump is something all Americans are noticing. We can talk in esoteric sorts of ways about national energy policy, but when people drive up and have to fill up their tank to be able to drive their kids to school or be able to drive to work, that is when they begin to understand the consequences of Congress's failure to act in a number of respects.

Last year about this time, our friends on the other side of the aisle held a press conference over on Massachusetts Avenue and were decrying the lack of action on the part of the then majority of Congress to bring down gasoline prices, but since that time, the average retail price of gasoline has gone up by 13 cents. I saw in today's day book for the Associated Press that the new majority, the Democratic majority is now going to have another press conference over at the same gas station talking about high gas prices.

I would suggest the responsibilities of being in the majority are to act, not just to hold press conferences. I think our friends haven't quite recognized the fact that they are in charge now. They have a responsibility to act instead of using the same old shop-worn tactics of holding a press conference and launching new investigations.

In fact, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have held extensive investigations already and basically concluded the problem is we don't have adequate supply, and we don't have adequate refinery capacity to keep up with the demand. As I noted yesterday, Congress can pass a lot of laws. We could even repeal some laws, but we can't repeal the laws of supply and demand. We know that in a booming world economy, where there is competition in India and China, countries with more than a billion people each, as the economies of other countries become more developed, they are going to demand more and more of the same limited supply of oil, and that is why we have seen the price of oil and gasoline go up. Rather than hold press conferences, my hope is our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the new majority who is in charge, would work with us to pass legislation which would actually have an impact and bring down gasoline prices, bring down oil prices, and enhance our national security at the same time.

It is no secret to any of us that most--or not most but a lot of the oil that we import comes from troubled regions of the world. It comes from Hugo Chavez and Venezuela, it comes from the Middle East, and I don't need to say more about that and how much that supply is threatened at times by the bellicose actions of countries such as Iran, a rising, they hope, nuclear power. I hope they do not acquire nuclear capacity because they are a State sponsor of international terrorism. But my point is we need to develop more of our domestic resources. We need to look for alternative forms of energy that are clean. We need to continue our scientific research into things such as clean coal-burning technology. We have about 300 years' supply of coal in this country, and we all know that coal can burn dirty, but the fact is that by using the technological advantages that we have in this country, we can conduct the kind of research that will allow us to use this coal in a way that does not pollute and does not endanger the environment. The fact is we simply can't turn a blind eye to any source of energy and remain competitive in the world economy. But the fact is also that we are simply not going to solve these problems by holding press conferences, as our colleagues are going to do, apparently, this afternoon, I think at 2:30 or 3:30. I can't remember when. They did that last year when they were in the minority. They have not quite yet, I guess, accepted the fact that on November 7 they won the election and they are now responsible. It means more than holding press conferences; it means action.

I tell my colleagues the Republicans are willing, ready, and able to work with them to try to solve the energy crisis, the gasoline price crisis in this country. It is not going to be easy, but for sure, none of us can do it in a partisan way. The only way we are going to be able to do it is by working together in the best interests of the American people. I think the American people are more than a little tired of some of the hollow rhetoric when people talk about problems, but when you are in a position to actually do something about it, that nothing gets done.

As our leader on this side of the aisle, Senator McConnell, has noted, divided Government actually provides an opportunity for us to take on some of these big problems, some of these big challenges that are harder to tackle when there is a single party in charge, but it takes a spirit of cooperation. It takes a desire to actually work together to try to solve these problems the best we can. The energy problem is just one of them. I would say the spiraling debt being accumulated by growth and entitlement programs is another one of them.

I am very disappointed that this new budget that is going to come to the floor later this week does nothing about passing the buck on entitlement spending. As a matter of fact, it imposes additional debt and burden on our children and grandchildren when we have the responsibility to pay our own bills, not use Social Security to pay for the general debt, which we are doing now, and other bookkeeping tactics that if we were in the private sector would probably mean that somebody would end up in jail. But the Federal Government plays those sorts of budget gimmicks, and they need to end.

So let me end by saying that this is an opportunity for us to work together but not if we are going to have press conferences and do nothing, talk tough but fail to use the tools that are available to us in Congress as representatives of our respective States to work together in a bipartisan way to try to solve them. I think that is what the American people want. That is why I came to the Senate. I wanted to do something. I wanted to actually make a difference. I think all of us feel roughly the same way, but somehow we have fallen into these bad habits of partisanship and avoiding the solutions that are readily at hand.

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