[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 47 (Wednesday, April 26, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H1747-H1748]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               GAS CRISIS

  (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, if you liked the administration and the 
Republican Congress' response to Hurricane Katrina, you are going to 
love the response to this gas crisis. Because while folks said they 
could not anticipate that the levees would be topped, when you do what 
the administration has done, you should have been anticipating $3 plus, 
$3.25, and $3.35 gasoline at the pump.
  When you go into secret energy meetings, as the Vice President did, 
to devise an energy strategy and come out with a giveaway to the energy 
industry; when you have a President who refuses to act when Enron was 
stealing billions of dollars from the economy,

[[Page H1748]]

telling the oil industry you can go ahead and do the same thing because 
I will not act; when three times Democrats stood proudly to have a bill 
to allow the FTC to investigate this price gouging and the Republicans 
voted in lockstep against it, you could anticipate the levees would be 
topped, and you could anticipate that the oil companies would run 
rampant with the price of gasoline.
  Now, how has this President responded? He wants to do this thing with 
a slow one-half of one-third of 1 percent increase in production to do 
something about it. If your house is on fire, the President would bring 
you a thimbleful of water, and that is the only assistance we are 
getting. We need real action, not these baby steps.

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