Price Of Gasoline

Floor Speech

PRICE OF GASOLINE -- (House of Representatives - May 23, 2007)

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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Thank you, Mr. Perlmutter. The gas issue, obviously the price going way up is hitting people pretty hard. But it is a real metaphor in my view for the two economies we are seeing emerge in this country. We are at a time now where the stock market has never been higher. People who have significant assets have never been doing better. Large corporations are making record profits. Executives, CEOs at large corporations, have never gotten better and sweeter pay packages.

But the vast majority of Americans are finding that their wages are stagnant, and the prices of things that they need, daycare, gasoline to get to and from work, to and from daycare, groceries, those things are going up and concealing this so-called ``tame'' inflation.

So what we are having in this country is the emergence of two economies, and our goal here in Congress is to start having a Congress that stands up and represents the needs and aspirations of average folks. We give them a leg up.

Every time the price of gasoline goes up about 10 cents, that is like a $16 billion hit on the consumer in this country. So you think about it. We have got a chart over here that shows gas prices going up, really doubling during the presidency of George Bush. But just take a $1 increase in the price of gasoline, that is like $160 billion tax increase that all comes out of the pockets of working Americans, the people who can afford it the least.

You look back at the last couple of years, what has happened when we have been talking about the oil industry are a couple of things. Number one, there has been very favorable legislation that has benefited the oil companies. At a time when the oil companies had record profits, $125 billion over 3 years, $125 billion over 3 years, at that time not our Congress, but the Congress that preceded us, the Republican Congress, gave tax breaks to the oil companies. The mature and very profitable industry got $13 billion out of taxpayer funds on top of the record profits they had received.

What we have done here is try to change the rules of the game and say that there has got to be a cop on the beat. It doesn't make sense for the prices to be going up on gasoline when we have seen the price of a barrel of oil go down and we haven't seen an increase in the demand, so that the laws of supply and demand are really being thwarted by the oligopolistic power of the very few oil companies that are able to manage the price and inflate their profits.

What we are doing is first taking back those tax breaks that went to big oil. We did that earlier on this year, hoping our friends on the Senate side join us. But, secondly, we are saying that the Federal Trade Commission should be active and aggressive in answering these questions on behalf of the American consumer.

Every 10 cents, $16 billion, that is a tax increase right out of the pockets of working Americans. Our responsibility to the American people is to make sure that consumers are protected so they are not getting ripped off. It is that simple. They need to keep that money in their pocket and not just be subject to the abuse of the monopoly power really of big oil.

So, that is a little perspective from Vermont. I will turn it over to my colleague from Connecticut, Representative Murphy.

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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. First of all, Mr. Perlmutter is right, oil has made us vulnerable in foreign policy. A big reason we are in Iraq clearly is related to oil. I think we have to be much straighter with the American people than Congress has been.

We are doing two things here. One, with this legislation, the price gouging legislation, we are providing basic protection against rip-offs, and that is just the fundamental responsibility that people's government has is to make sure that the people with a lot of money, corporate power, don't use that power to rip them off. That is one.

Second, we have to develop an energy policy. An energy policy, as has been said, is going to give us a lot more freedom in foreign policy, not create these enormous pressures to get involved in wars that we shouldn't be involved in.

Secondly, it is obviously good for the environment.

Third, as the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Braley) has been saying, it is good for the economy. The legislation we have to pass is not just on protecting the consumer, it is about creating a projobs, pro-high-tech, progrowth approach to addressing in a straightforward, confident way the energy challenge that we face.

One of the small bills that I have sponsored and you are a cosponsor of, Mr. Perlmutter, and I am soliciting more, is to make our offices carbon neutral here in Washington. When I got here, I was concerned about global warming. I checked into how much carbon pollution did I create just by turning my lights on here in Washington and Vermont, flying back and forth to my district, and then driving around. It is quite staggering: 754 tons. That is a lot just to show up for work.

I tried to find out how to offset that. Change the light bulbs, turn the thermometer so you don't use as much air conditioning or heat, and then invest in renewable energy that would allow a farm in southern Vermont to do a digester, a methane digester, which adds to the bottom line of farms, and all of our farms are struggling to make ends meet. We have to keep our farms in production and have local production of agriculture for the ag economy, but also for a way of life that a lot of folks in Vermont and Iowa want to maintain.

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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Right. What you are describing is the fact that you are going to produce your energy locally, so you are not going to have to go to the Middle East and ship it all of the way back here. The money you spend on energy are going to be dollars that stay in Colorado or Iowa. Every dollar you keep in your local economy gets circulated and multiplied. That is what creates jobs. We have to break the stranglehold of our addiction to oil. It is all about building a local economy.

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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. I agree with you. It is very exciting and an incredible privilege for all of us to be here. And there aren't free meals and there aren't free trips and all of the things that have been abused in the past, and that cuts across Republicans and Democrats, and it's all so that we can try to do a good job and give confidence to the American people.

But the challenge we have is giving us confidence, giving this Nation confidence that the Congress actually has as its first priorities the needs of the American families, not the needs of the corporations that are doing really well, which is not to say get in their way because we've got to have jobs and corporations do good things and create wealth, but we have to have a commitment to building a middle class.

What's always been the great hallmark of American democracy has been we've had an economic agenda that has said to people, who are willing to work, that they could climb the ladder of opportunity, and we pursued policies that gave them the chance to do it. Affordable and accessible education, affordable and accessible health care, nondiscrimination, the big fight that this country had for years that ultimately we've made enormous progress on. So people, regardless of the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, their religion, they have something to offer and they want to work, they're going to have a chance to get ahead.

Much of what we're trying to do on ethics, I agree with you. We served in the State legislatures. We had sunshine laws. We didn't have lobbyists buying things. It's all an alien situation that has been described here in D.C., but we're trying to bring the Iowa values and Vermont values, Florida, Colorado, here to D.C., and we've got to hang on to that. But it's all in service of trying to get the job done so that we have an economic agenda that helps average people.

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