[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 37 (Tuesday, March 20, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H963-H964]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           ADMINISTRATION DOING NOTHING TO HELP POWER CRISIS

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

[[Page H964]]

  Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, the Pacific Northwest is locked in an 
unprecedented drought. We have lost hydropower generation and we are 
going to have to buy energy. But the energy markets have gone haywire 
because of the failed California deregulation. Prices are 10 times what 
they were a comparable month 2 years ago.
  This is outrageous price gouging and profiteering on the part of some 
national energy companies. It is threatening residential ratepayers and 
businesses alike in the Northwest and California.
  The Northwest delegation just met with Vice President Cheney, and we 
have had the response of the Bush-Cheney administration. They will do 
one thing to help us, one thing to help the residential ratepayers and 
the businesses of the Pacific Northwest in the face of this catastrophe 
that is coming with huge rate increases for profiteering by a few 
national energy companies based, strangely enough, in Texas. They will 
do one thing to help us, they told us, and that one thing is nothing.

                          ____________________