[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 124 (Friday, October 6, 2000)]
[House]
[Page H9456]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       WE NEED ``POWER'' TO CONTROL UNSCRUPULOUS ENERGY PRODUCERS

  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, as our colleagues are going off to their 
home districts for the weekend, I want to remind them all of the crisis 
that is going on in my district in San Diego, California. They are the 
first city in California and, perhaps, the first in the Nation that has 
experienced full deregulation of its electricity prices. The cost of 
electricity to the average consumer, small business person, big 
business person has doubled, tripled in 3 or 4 months alone.
  I want to remind my colleagues about what is going on in San Diego 
because San Diego is the harbinger of things to come for the rest of 
California and possibly the Nation. We are the poster children for what 
happens when deregulation of a basic commodity like electricity takes 
place in a monopoly situation.
  Those who control the commodity can charge whatever price they can 
get. In fact, deregulation and the restructuring of the electricity 
industry is so flawed in California that electricity producers are 
allowed to charge wholesale prices four to five times higher than they 
were just a year ago. This is criminal, Mr. Speaker, and I use the word 
advisably.
  Energy producers are making obscene profits on the back of our senior 
citizens, our schools, our hospitals, our libraries, our businesses. 
Our whole economy in California is threatened.
  The electricity generators and marketeers have just in the last 4 
months alone sucked almost $5 billion, that is billion with a ``B,'' 
from our State economy, more than $450 million from San Diego alone.
  Now these generators claim that the high rates are simply the result 
of supply and demand forces in a marketplace. That is nonsense, Mr. 
Speaker. The facts are that Southern California has been using less 
energy than last year, but wholesale prices have gone up from highs of 
$50 per megawatt in 1999 to $300 and $500 and even higher at the 
sharpest spikes in the year 2000.
  The energy producers have figured out how to manipulate the market 
and set artificially high wholesale prices. They withhold power until 
the last minute. They launder power throughout out-of-state companies, 
they overload transmission lines, all to cause prices to rise to 
unprecedented levels and to raise their obscene profits. They already 
have killed off many small businesses in San Diego, caused unbearable 
suffering among those on fixed income, and robbed our whole community 
possibly of our future.
  I have introduced a bill, H.R. 5131, the HELP San Diego Act, which 
means Halt Electrical Price gouging in San Diego, with bipartisan 
support of the gentlemen from California (Mr. Hunter and Mr. Bilbray), 
my San Diego colleagues. Because although the State legislature has 
removed the gun from our head in capping retail prices, those prices 
are merely deferred for the next couple of years. Those bills will 
become due, and those debts will have to be paid. 5131 says that the 
wholesale generators and marketeers of electricity should pay that 
bill. They should refund the overcharges that they have made over the 
last 4 or 5 months.
  Now, as I said, this bill has bipartisan support. Yet the Republican 
leadership of this House will not schedule on the agenda a bill that is 
necessary to save the economy of San Diego.
  I call on the Republican leadership of this House to help San Diego, 
to put that bill on the agenda with bipartisan support, so we can, in 
fact, make sure that the future of San Diego's economy is secure.
  I have also introduced a bill today that we call the POWER Act. Quite 
simply, the POWER Act protects our communities by imposing 100 percent 
excise tax on windfall profits that are the rule of market manipulation 
and price fixing.
  If we cannot pass H.R. 5131, which directs the Federal Energy 
Regulatory Commission to roll back the wholesale price and refund the 
overcharge to consumers, the POWER Act says that 100 percent tax on 
windfall profits shall be assessed.
  This does not affect legitimate profits. It does not jeopardize any 
electrical producer. But it protects our senior citizens, our children, 
our small businesses, and our economy from the predatory actions of 
some unscrupulous companies that are taking advantage of their monopoly 
on the production of this vital and indispensable resource.
  I ask my colleagues, as they return to their districts, to keep a 
close eye on San Diego.

                              {time}  1500

  We need your help in this last week of Congress. We need to pass H.R. 
5131, a bipartisan bill to roll back wholesale prices in the western 
electric market, and to refund the consumers the obscene overcharging 
and profiteering they have been subject to.
  I hope this Congress can act and act quickly. We must help San Diego.

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