[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 56 (Monday, April 29, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H4115]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  GASOLINE PRICE INCREASES OUTRAGEOUS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Filner] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FILNER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today, and I know the Speaker is well 
knowledgeable about this, to speak about the sudden and outrageous 
increases in prices of gasoline that consumers in California and across 
the Nation have had to face.
  As you know, gasoline prices in California have gone up 40, 50, 60 
cents a gallon. They threaten to go even further, and there seems to be 
no market reason why this has occurred. There is no emergency, there is 
no situation that would seem to have caused this drastic escalation in 
prices.
  Consumers are outraged, I am outraged. My colleagues from California 
and I have joined together to ask for an investigation of this 
situation by the Attorney General to see whether any monopoly or other 
practices have been involved.
  At the same time that these increases have occurred, the major oil 
companies have reported 40-, 50-, 60-percent increases in their profits 
from the previous year. So it is clear that this rise in price in 
gasoline is tied directly to the rise in profits of our major oil 
companies.
  Now, the Speaker of the House visited California over the weekend and 
announced that he would ask the Congress to repeal the recently added 
gasoline tax of 4 cents or so a gallon. I welcome the Speaker's 
attention to the problems of consumers in California, but I think he 
has deliberately taken our eye off the ball to focus on an extraneous 
issue. The issue is the 50-, 60-cents-a-gallon increase, the issue is 
the 40-, 50-, 60-percent profit margins that have recently occurred by 
the oil companies. The issue is not the 4-cent-a-gallon Federal gas 
tax.
  Mr. Speaker, I would hope that the Speaker helps us to solve our 
problems in California by helping us focus in on the issues and not 
take our eye off the issues to support some special interest friends of 
his and his party. So I look forward to working with the Speaker to 
look into this outrageous increase in gasoline prices, to find the real 
reason for it, and to try to bring the consumer some relief from this 
outrageous price increase.

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