Personal Responsibility and Individual Development for Everyone Act

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT FOR EVERYONE ACT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from New Jersey for his leadership in the presentation he just made to the Senate. I would like at this time to address an issue that is extremely topical in Illinois and across the Nation, more so in some States than others, but it is the escalating gasoline prices people are facing.

Global crude oil prices are as high as they have been in a year. Domestically, retail gasoline prices are as high as they ever were, with the average price of gasoline $1.738, higher than a year ago. In Illinois, the current sale price of gas is $1.756 cents, which is higher than the current national average, higher than a month ago, and 4 cents higher than the average a year ago.

Gasoline prices affect Americans in the pocketbook. On the average, the cost of gasoline is about half of a family's transportation expenses. We love our cars, we love our trucks, we are in them a lot, and when gasoline prices go up, we pay more. The low-income families are hit the hardest by high transportation costs. The poorest 20 percent of American households, those earning less than $13,908 after taxes per year, spend 40 percent of their take-home pay on transportation.

There are many factors that have led to these high prices, some of them on the supply side and some on the demand side. U.S. crude oil inventories hit a 28-year low in January of this year. OPEC has been very prudent in putting oil on the market. I will get to the most current announcement on OPEC policy in a few minutes. In addition, refinery capacity in the United States has been down for years.

In the United States, cars, SUVs, pickup trucks, and minivans account for 40 percent of oil consumption, and the transportation sector itself accounts for 60 percent overall. Almost nothing has been done to curb this demand. The best way to address rising gasoline prices is to curb our Nation's insatiable thirst for guzzling gas.

I am leading the fight in the Senate to try to lessen overall demand for gas by improving the fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks. Last year, I offered an amendment to the energy bill which would have increased the Corporate Average Fuel Economy-or CAFE-law's standard for cars and SUVs to 40 miles a gallon by the year 2015, and the standard for trucks to 27.5 gallons in the same year.

I also introduced legislation that would discourage the building of more SUVs that achieve less than 15 miles per gallon, and to address the tax credit currently given to these SUVs, these gas guzzlers, and instead create a tax credit for consumers who purchase more fuel-efficient cars.

The Bush administration finalized regulations for SUVs and pickup trucks that would save at the most 20 billion gallons by 2015. This is one-sixth of the savings that would have occurred under the proposal I am offering-one-sixth. What I offered would have saved 123 billion gallons of gasoline by the year 2015-123 billion by reducing demand.

I urged my colleagues at the time to read the writing on the wall and realize if we didn't reduce the demand for gasoline for cars and trucks, we would not only have skyrocketing gasoline prices but even more pollution.

The New York Times editorial, Monday, March 22, 2004:

A much better way to strengthen America's leverage . . . is for the United States to limit its own consumption of energy . . . [T]he most straightforward [way] is to raise fuel economy standards by significant amounts. This is exactly what the country did after the oil shocks of the 1970's, resulting in huge savings in imported oil.

Thanks to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, CAFE, oil consumption is about 2.8 million barrels per day lower than it otherwise would be.

Studies have shown consumers can save as much as $2,000 over the lifetime of a car from higher fuel efficiency, even accounting for the cost of new vehicle technology.

Raising fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon would save consumers a cumulative $45.8 billion within about 10 years.

Unfortunately, since peaking at 22.1 miles per gallon in 1987 and 1998, average fuel economy declined nearly 8 percent to 20.4 in 2001, lower than it has been at any time since 1980.

Consider that for a moment. Instead of having more fuel efficiency and more fuel economy and less demand for foreign oil, our cars and trucks are less efficient burning gasoline, cause more pollution, and increase our dependence on foreign oil.

The Energy bill brought to us by the Bush administration didn't include any provision whatsoever to improve efficiency.

I will add, in all honesty and candor, that the automobile manufacturers in the United States and their unions also oppose increasing the fuel efficiency in cars. I think their reasoning is wrong. I think their excuses are lame. I think they are so shortsighted to believe that we can continue to build the most fuel-inefficient cars and trucks in the world and not run into the same problem we face today of increasing costs for fuel. As our demand increases, we can't produce enough fuel on our own. We import more and become more dependent on foreign fuel and, frankly, enslaved to OPEC. In a minute I will tell you what that enslaved position resulted in.

I say to my colleagues and many who have come to the floor to talk about gasoline prices, go back and check the Congressional Record. How did you vote when it came to making cars and trucks more fuel efficient? Sadly, very few of my colleagues joined me. It did not win a majority vote. I think those who complain today ought to take an inventory of their own voting record on this issue.

There are many things we should do. If we don't start fuel conservation and fuel efficiency and fuel economy, frankly, we will continue to be captives of the oil cartel. We will continue to watch these prices rise at the pump with very little we can do in response.

The next time we debate energy policy, I will be offering this amendment again. I hope we will do the right thing.

In the meantime, what do we do about the current prices? It is interesting what some have said when it comes to the current prices.

During the Republican primary debate in Manchester, NH, in the year 2000, in January, then-Governor Bush of Texas said:

What I think the President ought to do is he ought to get on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say we expect you to open your spigots. One reason why the price is so high is because the price of crude oil has been driven up. OPEC has gotten its supply act together and it is driving the price like it did in the past, and the President of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price.

Faced with these skyrocketing gasoline prices, the obvious question is, Did President Bush do what candidate Bush suggested? The answer is no.

Listen to what the Secretary of Energy, Spencer Abraham, had to say on March 24, just a few days ago, when he was asked about whether the administration should put pressure on OPEC not to cut the supply of oil and raise prices in America.

I quote the Secretary of Energy, Spencer Abraham, from the Washington Times.

Abraham said the administration would not temporarily stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help lower oil prices and it would not publicly call on OPEC to roll back production cuts scheduled for April 1st.

Here are the words of Secretary Abraham:

We've . . . made clear we are not going to beg them for oil.

What it means is when candidate Bush went to Manchester, NH, and said we need a forceful President who will stand up to OPEC to defend businesses and families and individuals across America who are paying the price of higher gasoline prices, candidate Bush when he became President Bush suffered severe political amnesia. He forgot what he said. Look where we are today.

The unfortunate reality is that we have a press release today from Vienna, Austria, from Reuters, which said:

''OPEC agreed Wednesday to endorse tighter curbs on oil production, ignoring concerns in some countries about crude oil prices near their highest level in 13 years," ministers said.

"The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to implement a deal cutting 1 million barrels a day from April 1," Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said. Libyian Oil Minister Fethi bin Chetwane also said that the cartel formally agreed Wednesday to implement the cuts, which were first proposed in Algiers in February.

Benchmark U.S. crude traded up 25 cents to $36.50 a barrel with the New York Mercantile Exchange's gasoline contracts sitting at an all-time high of $1.177 a gallon.

What is happening? Because this administration refuses to confront OPEC, because as Secretary of Energy Abraham said, we are not going to beg for oil, because President Bush forgot what he promised when he ran for President 4 years ago, American families and businesses will face oil prices at record high and historic levels.

What has been the response of the Bush administration to this reality? The response was to prepare a campaign ad attacking John Kerry. The campaign ad just started to run. It is an ad which criticizes Senator John Kerry, the purported Democratic nominee for President of United States, for supporting a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax, saying that the tax increase will cause the average consumer to pay $657 more a year, and that he supported high gasoline taxes 11 times.

This morning, the Washington Post decided to look at the charges, the negative ad, that is being run against John Kerry. Here is what they had to say:

Unlike three previous negative ads, this spot softens its charges with a mocking tone and funny footage against the "wacky" Kerry.

This is from the Washington Post.

But it unfairly presents a gas-tax hike as if it were the Senator's current position, when most of the examples are a decade old. Kerry voted in 1993 for the Clinton economic package, which included a 4.3 cent increase in the gas tax, and is widely credited with boosting the economy. He also opposed several Republican efforts to repeal the tax.

The article goes on to say, analyzing the Bush negative ad:

Kerry spoke in favor of a 50-cent hike in 1994 and as a possible way of cutting the deficit, but no such proposal came to a vote and he later changed his mind. His only recent vote was in 2000, when Kerry opposed the GOP effort to suspend 18 cents in gas taxes for five months.

The article goes on to say, analyzing the Bush attack ad:

The ad fails to mention that the President, who promised in 2000 to trim gas taxes, has never proposed such a cut. Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman said Kerry last year opposed Bush's energy bill, designed to boost oil in part by allowing drilling in Alaska. Kerry's spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter called the measure "a giveaway" to the oil companies and a Republican-controlled Congress killed it. The Kerry camp dug out a quote in which Bush's top economic adviser [the ever-present and almost infamous] N. Gregory Mankiw, backed a 50-cent gas tax in 1999.

You may remember Mr. Mankiw. Mr. Mankiw was the man, the President's economic adviser, who sent the economic report to Congress. In it Mr. Mankiw, with his own insight as the top economist of the Bush administration, said that the outsourcing of jobs to India and China was a good thing. Now we were trading in new things like call centers. It was a good thing-Mankiw's own words.

So Mr. Mankiw, top economic adviser to George Bush, it turns out, was supporting a 50-cent increase in the gasoline tax in 1999. Interesting. And President Bush and his campaign continue to run ads attacking John Kerry and saying that the real reason for the gasoline price increases that we are seeing across America is John Kerry voting for a 4.3-cent gasoline tax increase 11 years ago.

Is that as good as they can get? Is that the best they can come up with? What they are ignoring is the obvious. They are ignoring the fact that this President has the power, as President of the United States, to put the pressure on OPEC, and refuses to do it. Why? Why is this President backing away? Is it this oil connection with the President and Vice President Cheney? Is it the fact that some of the OPEC cartel countries have been some of the favorites of this administration for political and other reasons?

What is it all about? Why wouldn't this President, facing a gasoline crisis in America today, do what he said he would do when he ran for office in the year 2000? It is an answer I cannot come up with. But I will tell you, the American people will come up with it. They understand what this is all about.

The President can promise tiny little tax cuts for working families and massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and then turn around and fail to show leadership on gasoline prices, and watch whatever benefit those small tax cuts meant to lower-income families disappear.

The Bush administration's failed policies have created record high prices for gasoline. Americans are paying 12 percent more for gasoline since former oil industry executives President Bush and Vice President Cheney took office on the pledge that their ties to the oil industry would lead to lower gas prices.

Well, it did not work, just as the President's economic policy did not work. Here we have a President who, in a matter of 3 years and a few months, has lost more jobs in America than any President in the last 70 years, and that includes Republicans and Democrats alike. Tax cuts to the wealthy did not create jobs. And the President's cozy relationship with the oil companies and the oil sector certainly has not kept gasoline prices under control. The President refuses to confront OPEC and tell them they have to stop taking advantage of American families and businesses.

Secretary Abraham: "We won't beg for oil."

Well, I do not think you have to beg. Many of these countries in the Middle East, as part of the OPEC cartel, depend on the United States for an important and valuable market. They depend on the United States for many security items. They depend on the United States and its friendship and alliance when things get tough, such as the instance in Kuwait and the Persian Gulf crisis.

Why wouldn't this President go to the leaders in OPEC and tell them what they were doing to America and the American economy, gripped with this so-called jobless recovery. Frankly, a jobless recovery is no recovery at all. We all know that. Facing a jobless recovery, this President will not confront OPEC and tell them: Keep gasoline prices low; increase your exports of crude oil so we do not run up the cost of business for small and large businesses alike, and run up the cost of living for average working families.

Economist David Rosenberg told CNN's Lou Dobbs:

[P]ain at the pump has wiped out more than $20 billion of the coming $40 billion in tax refund checks.

How did he come to that conclusion? On January 5, American consumers paid $1.51 for an average gallon of gas. As of today, less than 3 months later, they are paying $1.75 a gallon-a 24-cent increase since January.

According to the Wall Street Journal:
[E]very penny increase in a gallon of gas costs consumers $1 billion a year.

So if prices remain high, that means a $24 billion gas tax hike has been placed on the American people, for the failure of the Bush administration to confront the OPEC cartel, as he promised to do.

But that is not all.

Nationwide gas prices have risen 12 percent since the year 2000 and are expected to skyrocket upwards to $1.83 a gallon this summer when gasoline prices usually peak-a 17-percent increase in gasoline prices since President Bush took office.

So what is wrong with this picture? When it comes to employment, there is nothing but bad news in statistics. The unemployment rates continue to go up. When it comes to gasoline prices and its cost to families and businesses, more bad news from the Bush administration: a 17-percent anticipated increase by this summer.

Guy Caruso, the administrator of the Energy Information Administration, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that an average family will spend about $1,700 for gasoline in 2004. At today's gas prices, this means the average family will spend over $300 more for gas than they would have if prices were at the level they were the week President George W. Bush took office.

As I said, candidate Bush knew what to do. President Bush refused to do it. Candidate Bush said: Confront the OPEC cartel. President Bush said: We are not going to dirty our hands by "begging for oil."

Because the Bush administration did not follow its own advice from 2000, OPEC has decided to pursue additional cuts, leaving American consumers more susceptible to higher gas prices.

Let me say, gas prices have been an issue for the Vice President, too. On October 9, 1986-since President Bush's campaign is dredging up history when it comes to JOHN KERRY-as a Member of the House of Representatives, DICK CHENEY, our Vice President, introduced a bill to establish a $24-per-barrel price floor on imported crude oil-a mandatory minimum price, indexed to inflation, that today would have reached as high as $36.12 a gallon. If Vice President Cheney's bill had passed in 1986, consumers would have paid over $1.2 trillion in increased gas prices since that year, with $600 billion going to oil companies.

In 2001, as Vice President, former Halliburton CEO DICK CHENEY led an energy task force that met with energy industry officials in closed meetings to write the energy bill of this administration. The meetings led to the administration's energy policy, which has failed on the Senate floor. The administration has refused to release detailed records of the meetings to the General Accounting Office, the investigative branch of Congress. The secrecy surrounding the meetings is so unusual and unprecedented that the Supreme Court on April 27-just a few weeks from now-will hear arguments that the records for the meetings should be opened.

Republicans have criticized JOHN KERRY for supporting gas taxes in his Senate career, but, as I have said, these charges are grossly exaggerated and a distortion. This, frankly, is what I am afraid we can expect more of during this campaign. But I think the American people know, while Republicans make a lot of noise about opposing a gas tax, the record tells a different story.

Ronald Reagan said of the gas tax:

The cost to the average motorist will be small, but the benefit to our transportation system will be immense.

Republican leaders in the House have pushed for a gas tax hike this year. In fact, House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman DON YOUNG of Alaska proposed a 5.4-cent-per-gallon gas increase this Congress. And President Bush, who promised to cut the gas tax as a candidate, has never acted to do so once in office.

So I think what faces America is clear. We need leadership in the White House that is not afraid to confront OPEC. We need a President who is not afraid to get on the phone, through his Secretary of State, Secretary of Energy, and say to those in the OPEC cartel that they cannot unilaterally put us in a position where our economy-struggling to come out of recession, struggling to recover, struggling to create jobs-is going to end up hat in hand, in a situation where we have no recourse for families and for businesses.

But the Bush administration failed. They failed to do what the President should have done in showing leadership on this issue. The President said one thing in the campaign and has done another thing now in the White House.

American families are going to have to face that cost. When you look at this record, sadly, it is not too much of a surprise. Here we are faced with a struggling economy and an administration which, despite losing more jobs than any President in 7 years, refuses to support a payout of unemployment compensation to the workers and families who have lost their jobs, an administration which understands that more workers are working longer hours to make ends meet and comes up with a proposal to eliminate overtime pay for 8 million American workers.

We created the overtime law in 1938. Since we said that after you work 40 hours, you are going to be paid more under the law, every administration that has addressed this law has increased the eligibility of American workers until this administration. With the Bush administration, for the first time in history, a President has proposed cutting overtime pay for 8 million workers in America.

Think about that. If he is successful in doing that, it means that the workers who are going to work today will have to work longer hours just to keep up with the lost pay from this Bush administration policy. So who are these workers? They are policemen, firefighters, nurses, and people, frankly, who we count on every single day. This is an administration which won't provide unemployment compensation despite losing millions of jobs since the President was elected, an administration which cuts overtime pay for some 8 million workers, and an administration which has decided as a matter of policy it will not support an increase in the minimum wage for workers in America.

We are in the midst of debating the welfare bill. I voted for welfare reform. I hope I can vote for this bill. There are many positive aspects to it. But if we want to keep people off welfare, if we want to reward work and reward the right decisions, then we certainly should give fair and adequate compensation to those who struggle. Can you think of what life would be like if you faced $5.15 an hour, a little over $10,000 a year, as your total income, and then add on to that a second job, if you could get it, that has you working 16 hours a day and doubles your income to $20,000 or $22,000 a year?

These proud and hard-working people get up and go to work every single day. They are the visible Americans who make the beds in our hotel rooms, bus our tables in the restaurants, wash the dishes in back of the kitchen, deal with tending our children in daycare facilities. We have said, because of the refusal of this administration and Congress to increase the minimum wage, that we have so little respect for their work ethic we will not allow the minimum wage to be increased in America.

The insensitivity of this administration to working families and to the sad state of the economy has been documented again, not just with unemployment compensation, not just with overtime pay, not just with its resistance to increasing the minimum wage, but with the refusal of this President to keep his campaign promise from the year 2000 and to put pressure on OPEC not to cut the production of oil, forcing an increase in gasoline prices across America.

We need more compassion from this administration. We need more of a connection between this administration and working families across America. We need a change.