OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Iran's Missile Test

Floor Speech

Date: May 20, 2009
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Infrastructure Energy

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Mr. CARTER. We're saying $5 a gallon for gasoline with that increase being caused by this tax-and-trade scheme that's being sold to the Congress as some kind of clean-up-the-world project. We think that at least ought to raise the issue and should slow down the process. Yet they say, No. Let's see what's going to happen when it gets to be $5 a gallon.

Let's think in our recent past as to what happens when gasoline gets to $5 a gallon. Well, of course it's going to be the evil oil companies' fault that secretly have made deals with each other to fix prices and to make them go up. That's why, when they said the electricity bills are going to go up, we just said that we wanted them to say on the electricity bill what caused this to go up. Well, it happens to be our cap-and-tax program that caused it to go up. That's fair. The American people ought to know what caused the doubling of their electricity bills. Guess what they're going to say? Oh, the evil power companies have jacked the prices up to bilk the poor consumers. Truth and sunshine is what this government needs. Put the truth in the bill.

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Mr. CARTER. That's fine. I don't have a problem with that at all, but let's get back to what we're doing.

You know, there's an old saying: ``I won't tax you and I won't tax me. I'll tax that fellow behind the tree,'' okay? That's kind of what we heard from the Obama administration when we started off: Don't worry. Ninety-five percent of the people in America are not going to be taxed by this administration. Yet, as my colleague from Georgia said, there's not anything you can think of that doesn't have an energy cost in it. Nothing. I mean it's in everything. So I don't care how rich you are or how poor you are. You're going to be taxed by this.

Now, don't give me the excuse of, well, we're just taxing the company, and they're taxing you. That doesn't work. Everybody knows where this tax is going. They know it in the administration, and we know it in Congress. It's going to us, to the individual Americans, and we're going to pay this tax. Look at that. Shoes. Plastic. Food. Electricity. Housing. All that.

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