Surging Gasoline Prices

Floor Speech

SURGING GASOLINE PRICES -- (House of Representatives - May 23, 2007)

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, surging gas prices at the pump surely tell us, just before Memorial Day, that something has gone wrong again with the rigged oil markets.

We've seen gasoline prices in our country set all-time highs. Ohio families are paying $3.50 to $3.93 a gallon, with no end in sight. And when President Bush took office, they were paying $1.46 a gallon. In fact, when Vice President Cheney was sworn in, Halliburton's stock was worth one-fourth of what it's worth today.

So we think about America's families and our consumers. They're being hurt. Car and truck sales are being hurt. Our economy is being hurt. It's all so unnecessary.

When you fuel up, the chances are 7 out of 10 that the crude oil for the gasoline came from an undemocratic foreign country, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Angola, Mexico, maybe even trafficked out of Iraq, places that do not exactly love thriving democracy.

Meanwhile, in oil-rich Iraq, this week, eight more American soldiers were killed in roadside bomb attacks near Baghdad. And this brings to nearly 3,400 U.S. service-member deaths in Iraq, plus additional Department of Defense civilian employees, and the death toll keeps mounting.

The major oil pipeline and refinery in Iraq is now being guarded by our best, the 82nd Airborne, and sundry private contractors. They're guarding oil lines and the refinery. In fact, some of that oil has been stolen and even trafficked throughout the war.

Meanwhile, a new hydrocarbon law is being pushed in Iraq, which boasts the second largest oil reserves in the world, that would privatize the majority of oil in that country to who? That's the trillion-dollar question. That's the $23 trillion question.

How disgusting to me that our finest military have to die in an oil war. When will the American people begin to connect undemocratic oil regimes, imported oil, and the lives of our sons and daughters while our gasoline-consuming public is subjected here to the oil marketeers?

I don't think anybody would admit it is a free market in oil. It's a cartelized market. It has been for half a century.

Exxon and the other major oil companies are raking in historic profits at the expense of our sons and daughters. We see U.S. military power fully projected in Kuwait, in Iraq, benefiting their neighbors, too, like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, who have had to hire growing legions of private security firms to hold up their kingdoms and emirates. Saudi Aramco is the largest privately held company in the world, and Exxon Aramco the most profitable oil company in history. Are you starting to see the picture?

Let me ask a critical question: Would any of the oil profits made off the pocketbooks of Americans be going to hire more security guards in Saudi Arabia, or in Bahrain, or in Kuwait? As Will Rogers would say, ``You betcha.''

Our Nation's military power is now fully projected in the deserts over there, and here in Washington sits Congress and a President who say they want to break oil addiction from imported sources. But since President Bush took office, we are importing a billion more barrels a year, a billion more barrels a year every year since 2001. It is projected we will spend a trillion dollars on the war in Iraq, and it is not anywhere close to over. Yet we passed a bill out of the House a few months ago that just put a thimble full of additional resources in renewable energy. Is there any dispatch here? Is there any urgency? Is there any seriousness? Let the American people tell us. Do you see it? Do you hear it? Do you feel it in your pocketbooks?

Citizens are expressing their frustration with our inability to rein in the abuses of the oil companies. And I have got a partial solution. This week I am introducing a bill to give something back to the American people tired of being gouged by the oil companies. It is called the ``Give America Something Act of 2007,'' the GAS Act, G-A-S. Give every American a one-time immediate $100 gas payment refund. They can use it to pay for higher gas prices. They can use it to pay for higher transit costs. And we pay for it by imposing a windfall profits tax on oil revenue to provide the revenue to finance the program. This is long overdue.

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