[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 38 (Thursday, March 30, 2006)]
[House]
[Page H1366]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               GAS PRICES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, gas prices are rising and someone is to 
blame.
  The root cause of the rising gasoline prices, as an editorial in this 
week's Wall Street Journal rightly states, is the incredible shrinking 
of supply of a gasoline additive called MTBE. The production of MTBE 
has been for 15 years the direct result of a Federal mandate that such 
oxygenates be included in the Nation's gas supply. It was mandated by a 
Democrat Congress seeking to help clean the environment.
  Now, that mandate is expiring in May, in large part owed to the 
discovery of MTBE in some water supplies, a discovery that has trial 
lawyers salivating as they count down the days. And the main culprit 
for its seeping into water supplies is faulty, unrepaired, leaking 
underground storage tanks.
  But the producers of those do not have the deep pockets of MTBE 
producers. Thus, when MTBE producers' liability protection expires in 
May, as the editorial states: ``Producers and refiners will face far 
greater liability, which has set off a race to exit the market'' 
because, as history has shown, the vultures in the lawsuit-happy trial 
bar will pounce on those with the deepest pockets.
  In other words, the Federal Government mandated the production and 
addition of MTBE as a clean air additive to the Nation's fuel. But now 
the government says that mandate, while good for clean air, turns out 
actually to have been bad for groundwater. Now the government wants to 
let trial lawyers hold the industry accountable for environmental 
problems the government itself created with its original mandate. 
Meanwhile, the Nation's ethanol producers, who must now fill the 
additive void created by the widespread and predictable MTBE pullout, 
have already admitted they cannot meet the new market demand.
  No MTBE and not enough ethanol will mean less gasoline on the market, 
less gasoline that can be prepared for the market, creating a shortage 
of supply and thus higher prices. In other words, come Memorial Day, 
gas prices, which are already higher than they have been since the 
early days after Hurricane Katrina, stand to spike even higher.
  All of this economic analysis in the Journal's editorial, 
regrettably, is true. What is not true is the editorial's insinuation 
that congressional Republicans are to blame for it.
  On the contrary, Mr. Speaker, House Republicans fought for years to 
include MTBE-liability protection in the energy bill. The bill was 
shelved in 2003 when a Democrat-led filibuster, joined by liberal 
Republicans, succeeded in killing it, an outcome brought about, the 
then-Democrat leader said, by ``the House Republican leadership's 
insistence on inclusion of retroactive liability protections for 
MTBE.''
  So in 2004 the energy bill effectively died when the Senate Energy 
and Natural Resources chairman unilaterally pulled the MTBE provisions 
from the Senate version of the legislation. So, finally, in 2005 the 
MTBE-protection provision was described by the House minority leader as 
a ``disgraceful . . . giveaway.'' Enough Senate Republicans agreed with 
this false assessment to ensure that the energy bill was finally 
passed, after 4 years of effort, without the desperately needed MTBE 
provisions that House Republicans advocated for so long.
  The result: the ethanol-MTBE fiasco, as the Journal puts it, is not 
the fault of Republicans on Capitol Hill, broadly speaking, but only 
about seven of them, all Senators, Senators who joined obstructionist 
Democrats and eco-extremists to punish an innocent industry.
  House Republicans warned all along about the MTBE pullout, the 
ethanol shortfall, and the resulting spike in gas prices just in time 
for the 2006 summer traveling season, and we were right.
  MTBE liability protection is the only thing standing between the 
American people and $3-a-gallon gas this summer. And the only thing 
standing between MTBE-liability and the President's signature is a 
collection of Senators, the long-term effects of whose shortsighted 
grandstanding are only now starting to be felt.
  So, Americans, when it hits $3 a gallon, call the Senate.
  Hopefully, yesterday's editorial will give MTBE-protection new life 
in Congress. And if not, drivers, especially in those States of 
Senators from New Mexico, Arizona, Maine, Vermont, Iowa, Illinois, 
North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and New Hampshire, will know who 
to thank.

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