High Gas Prices

Floor Speech

HIGH GAS PRICES -- (Senate - June 17, 2008)

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, it has been more than a week since the Democratic nominee for President, the junior Senator from Illinois, responded to high gas prices by saying it wasn't high gas prices he minded but the fact that people didn't have time to get used to them. In his words, he would have preferred a ``gradual adjustment'' to a sudden jolt.

As I said last week, I can't imagine this is a view many other people share, certainly not the people of Kentucky, who I assure you are not at all interested in getting used to $4-a-gallon gas, however gradual the adjustment. Our Democratic colleagues on the other side of the aisle have had a week to demonstrate they do not embrace the ``gradual adjustment'' philosophy of their nominee. We haven't heard a word from any of them.

Maybe they don't have a problem with $4-a-gallon gasoline either. Maybe the junior Senator from North Dakota was speaking for all of them when he said over the weekend that $4-a-gallon gasoline was finally forcing people to conserve. Telling people whose livelihoods depend on getting to and from work that they should get used to high gas prices is not an energy policy.

Supporting a gradual adjustment to $4-a-gallon gasoline is not an energy policy. Americans need an energy policy befitting America, and that means using the natural resources we have here at home to bring down prices in the short term, while pursuing a long-term strategy for energy independence through clean technologies. We can do both, and we should do both.

We need more American energy now. That is the short-term solution to the current crisis. So, again, I call on our friends to consider this reasonable two-part solution and to drop their absolutist opposition to energy exploration in America.

I yield the floor.

Source