[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 30, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H4133]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               GAS PRICES

  (Mr. KLINK asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KLINK. Mr. Speaker, I had not intended to speak on this, but 
after I have heard the comments from the other side regarding the 
increase in the gas tax back in 1993, I cannot constrain myself. First 
of all, I would remind my friends, let us go back and take a look at 
what happened under Presidents Reagan and Bush in regard to their 
increase in the gas tax. Let us not be revisionist.
  Let us take a look at what happened to gas prices in this country 
when we raised it 4.3 cents per gallon. Gas prices in 1993, in 1994, in 
1995 went down. They did not go up. But here we are in 1996 and we are 
reaching back to 1993 to be able to blame President Clinton because we 
have nothing else to blame him on because the stock market went up, 
employment went up, unemployment went down. Misery went down, so let us 
blame him on something else.
  We are here right now trying to make sure that these working poor 
have an ability to earn a living wage. We have given them, in the same 
bill that increased the gas taxes, an earned-income tax credit to help 
people get off welfare and into work. The GOP right now is opposed to 
giving people a 90-cent raise in the minimum wage. I would say that 
somewhere between Abraham Lincoln and the current Republican 
leadership, the GOP has taken an about-face on slavery.

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