High Gas Prices

Floor Speech

HIGH GAS PRICES -- (Senate - June 18, 2008)

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, high gas prices continue to frustrate the American people, and so I think it is important that Congress show we are fully engaged on this issue and ready to help in any way we can. Unfortunately, that means the parties will have to come together on a solution, something our friends on the other side seem, at least so far, stubbornly unwilling to do.

The commonsense solution to this problem, we all know, is a combination of energy exploration in the United States to bring down prices in the short term married to a long-term strategy of energy independence through development of clean energy technologies. If we are going to help Americans in the short term, obviously we need more American energy now, but our friends on the other side don't want to hear it. They think Americans should get used to $4-a-gallon gasoline.

Asked last week about the sudden spike in gas prices, the Democratic nominee for President said he would have preferred a gradual adjustment. As I have said several times, and others have, I don't think that is the common view in the United States, and I want to give my colleagues on the other side one more opportunity to say that, in their view, Americans shouldn't have to get used to $4-a-gallon gasoline. I haven't heard a single one of them say so yet, but I can't imagine they agree with their nominee that what Americans really needed was a gradual adjustment to $4-a-gallon gasoline.

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