[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 71 (Tuesday, May 22, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H2548-H2549]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               BUSH ADMINISTRATION NATIONAL ENERGY POLICY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Grucci). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, this is a continuing discussion of the so-
called national energy policy of the Bush administration. Buried way 
back in the back of this report, under appendix one, under summary of 
recommendations, on an unnumbered page, is a recommendation that the 
Federal Government and, of course, the States' rights party, my 
Republican friends, should mandate that every State in America adopt 
energy deregulation.
  Now, if it was working somewhere, that might be a good idea, but we 
have all seen the extraordinary disaster in California. The disaster in 
California is spreading across the western United States. It is 
extracting billions, billions of dollars from residential ratepayers, 
small businesses and large businesses, and upstreaming that money to a 
few special companies. It happens that three or four of them are based 
in Houston, Texas, in particular, one really outstanding corporate 
citizen named Reliant Energy.
  Now, Reliant saw its profits go from $27 million last year to over 
$500 million in 1 year. What great new thing did they invent or 
provide? Nothing. What they managed to do was buy cheap a couple of 
energy plants in California and begin the most sophisticated gaming of 
the energy market as reported in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, and 
all of us in the west are paying. In fact, in the Pacific Northwest, we 
are paying higher average wholesale prices than are the people of 
California.
  This manipulation is spreading across the entire western United 
States, and now the Bush administration thinks this is such a great 
thing, we should spread it across the entire United States with a new 
mandate that every State adopt this. Now, my colleagues may say, ah, 
well, the California system is flawed. Well, I tell my colleagues, take 
out the flaws of the California system and go to Montana. You will find 
that all the large manufacturers in Montana are closing down because 
Pennsylvania Power & Light bought their generation, gaming them, and 
they cannot afford the power any more.
  Or let us go to New England. In New England, PGE of California, that 
says they are broke in California, sent the money to the parent 
company. The parent company created a new company, which is PGE of New 
England. And PGE of New England is manipulating the market there and 
has raised the prices substantially.
  This is the great new thing the Bush administration wants to bring to 
all of America: more profits, rolling blackouts, price gouging, and a 
mandate from the Republican administration that every State be subject 
to this sort of case.

[[Page H2549]]

  Now, this is because of the undue influence of Enron, the largest 
energy conglomerate in the world. In fact, the CEO of Enron has 
personally, personally, over the years, given George Bush $2 million to 
run for office, and has personally chosen the two new appointees to the 
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to make certain that his interests 
are protected. And he is the only person that Vice President Dick 
Cheney could name when he said he had been meeting with lots of people, 
lots of people, outside of certain special interests. In fact, he 
mentioned Ken Lay, Enron. Of course, he does happen to be the head of 
the largest energy conglomerate in the world, and they are profiting 
well.
  But let us get back to Reliant for a moment. Here is what came out in 
the paper. They are cycling their plants up and down, destroying the 
plants, in fact, causing additional maintenance and long-term outages 
and long-term deterioration to game the market in 10-minute increments. 
They have a direct phone line from Houston, Texas, to their plant 
operators in California. And the guys in Texas are not looking to see 
whether the lights are on or off or the people need the juice or the 
businesses need the electricity. They are looking to see what the price 
is. And when the price starts to go down, they call the plant and they 
say, shut it down. They shut down. They watch, they watch, and 10 
minutes later, if the price starts to go up, crank it up, we can make 
more money. This is the future.
  I thought that the key for electricity was reliability, affordability 
and service. We were promised that deregulation would be more reliable, 
more affordable with better service. And instead we find that 
deregulation is rife with market manipulation, profiteering, and 
unreliable service, with rolling blackouts and brownouts, bankrupting 
businesses and residential consumers alike. And now the Bush 
administration thinks that is so spiffy that everybody in America 
should be subject to that.
  That is definitely one part of their plan that has to go when this 
Congress acts on the so-called national energy policy.

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