[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 59 (Wednesday, April 22, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4567-S4569]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                IDAHOANS SPEAK OUT ON HIGH ENERGY PRICES

  Mr. CRAPO. Mr. PRESIDENT, in mid-June, I asked Idahoans to share with 
me how high energy prices are affecting their lives, and they responded 
by the hundreds. The stories, numbering well over 1,200, are 
heartbreaking and touching. While energy prices have dropped in recent 
weeks, the concerns expressed remain very relevant. To respect the 
efforts of those who took the opportunity to share their thoughts, I am 
submitting every e-mail sent to me through an address set up 
specifically for this purpose to the Congressional Record. This is not 
an issue that will be easily resolved, but it is one that deserves 
immediate and serious attention, and Idahoans deserve to be heard. 
Their stories not only detail their struggles to meet everyday 
expenses, but also have suggestions and recommendations as to what 
Congress can do now to tackle this problem and find solutions that last 
beyond today. I ask unanimous consent to have today's letters printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       My personal and family circumstances are good with regard 
     to income and out-go. That being said, the price of fuel, 
     whether diesel or gasoline, is still an outrage, but there is 
     absolutely nothing the government should do about it 
     directly. Yes, we should make a meaningful effort to develop 
     alternative fuel sources and methods of transportation and 
     even responsibly drill for our own oil and gas here at home. 
     But, the minute [price controls are started], that is when 
     all hell breaks loose and things go to hell in a handbasket. 
     Please advise your colleagues to not impose a windfall 
     profits tax on oil companies. That will be another direct tax 
     on the American consumer, [even though many do not pay 
     attention.] Most Americans will just continue to believe it 
     is the oil companies that are the culprits because of what we 
     hear on TV!
       Please be smart about this. Let capitalism rule. Tell our 
     ``friends'' in the Middle East to enjoy selling to China and 
     India and let us become responsibly self-sufficient, like we 
     should be. And, by the way, if oil were not traded as a 
     futures commodity, I am betting the price would tank quickly 
     and substantially. What do you think?
     Scott, Malad.
                                  ____

       Thank you for asking about how gasoline prices are 
     affecting my family. The increase of energy costs has allowed 
     my family to make conscious decisions, instead of acting on 
     impulses. Our family is combining trips and errands. We are 
     going with each other instead of separately and enjoying our 
     new shared times. I am so disappointed when I reviewed the 
     salaries of the big oil executives and found them arrogant 
     when I watched them testifying before the Committee on C-
     SPAN. It looks to me like they pocketed the money and failed 
     to improve their facilities.
       I have been discouraged that not one of Idaho's 
     Congressional delegation has asked my family to conserve one 
     ounce of petroleum. I do not want a knee-jerk reaction to 
     higher prices at the pumps and check-outs; I want 
     examination, reviews and bipartisan recommendations. It seems 
     the decisions made in hurry during the last eight years have 
     caught up with us. Slow down and do what is right for 
     America.
     June.
                                  ____

       I am grateful that you have given us a chance to be able to 
     express our frustrations and opinions on what is going on 
     with the energy situation.
       We moved to Idaho Falls from Utah four years ago because my 
     husband was able to get a job, with his Bachelors degree, 
     that paid more per year than I was making with a Masters 
     degree teaching. The cost of living was lower than Utah, and 
     we absolutely love the area. We bought our home, as a 
     foreclosure, three years ago about six miles outside of Idaho 
     Falls, in Iona. It was cheaper to buy a foreclosure than it 
     was to rent an apartment.
       We are not extravagant by any means. We try to conserve 
     energy. We are fixing our home as fast and as cost-effective 
     as we can, which has not been too fast. About a year ago, 
     because all of our bills were going up and our paycheck was 
     not, we made the decision that it was better to forego 
     medical insurance for the family and put money away into a 
     health savings account (HSA). Our reasoning is that we have 
     to live day-to-day

[[Page S4568]]

     paying our bills, and it is an off-chance that we use our 
     insurance. We have definitely paid more for premiums in the 
     last two years than we have used since we married six years 
     ago, besides the fact that the premiums were once again going 
     up to a level that we could not afford them anyway. It was 
     wonderful! We were able to start paying down debt (which we 
     really do not have a lot of outside our house and student 
     loans). We drive older vehicles that are paid off.
       Since then, our bills have about doubled. We put a wood 
     stove in our home two years ago because of the high increase 
     in natural gas and, although that has saved us a lot of 
     money, the price increase is still staggering. Our power bill 
     has almost doubled also, although we use our furnace/AC about 
     half as much as we used to, put in the compact fluorescent 
     bulbs and put in a clothesline.
       My husband works as a PSR worker and has anywhere from 6-10 
     clients a week, and is pretty much mandated by Medicaid to 
     spend three or less hours with each client. The only problem 
     is that his clients live anywhere from Menan to Ammon. His 
     work reimburses him $3/hour/client (billable hour--meaning he 
     has to be with his client to bill) to pay for gas, phone and 
     wear and tear on our vehicle. He puts about 200 miles on the 
     ``work car'' each week. He is already gone about 55 hours a 
     week, in which he is only paid 40-43 because he is not paid 
     for drive time. Lately [he has been] working overtime which 
     allows us to pay our bills and pay a little extra each month. 
     But his bosses have been getting tough on allowing overtime 
     (which is a catch-22 since they will not guarantee him 40 
     hours a week--if he has a client cancel on him, tough luck). 
     We have considered him getting another job, but he really 
     does not have any time to fit in another job, and he is 
     scared of leaving his current job because our family depends 
     on him for support and he does not want to go from bad to 
     worse.
       Since the price of energy has gone up, we have cut our 
     expenses as much as we can. We did not drive much before but 
     other than my husband working, we go to church on Sunday and 
     go into town, as a family, to do shopping and other errands 
     about once a month. We have also had to cut our grocery list 
     because of the price of food. It is not just gas, electricity 
     and natural gas that have gone up, our water, sewer and now 
     property taxes have gone up too, where is this going to end?
       We look at our budget now and wonder what else we can cut 
     when (and we have no illusions that anything is going down 
     anytime soon) energy costs go up anymore. We can cut our 
     internet, landline and our entertainment budgets which will 
     save us $60 a month--a tank of gas right now. But other than 
     that we are stretched pretty thin, and we are not paying 
     anything into a HSA because there is nothing left.
       I do not have all the answers, but I know that it is a 
     failed policy on the part of our government that is making 
     things more difficult than it needs to be. When our country 
     is allowing a minority group of people (environmentalists) 
     create our energy policies the majority of the people are 
     going to suffer. I know that we have a need to protect our 
     environment, but there are new technologies there that we are 
     not allowed to pursue either. I am frustrated beyond words. 
     Our government is trying to help everyone in a crisis, but is 
     creating a greater crisis with regulations. I could have had 
     the same policy as the government and not gotten a degree 
     because it would not have immediate effects. I could 
     completely neglect my children because the things I teach 
     them now will not have an immediate effect. I could extend 
     the analogy to a lot of things. We need to start working 
     on new energy policies that may not take effect until 
     later, but will help later. Let us stop procrastinating 
     and do.
     Carolyn.
                                  ____

       As a small business building contractor, our fuel prices 
     have gone out of sight, let alone building materials, which 
     our increases can hardly cover. The only thing that does not 
     go up is wages. We have to subsidize our workers' fuel just 
     to get them to work. It cannot go on this way for much 
     longer.
     J.K.
                                  ____

       Like you and countless others, I believe that many of the 
     serious lifestyle challenges we face are energy-related. It 
     is obvious to any thinking Idahoan and hopefully most 
     Americans, that our physical security as a nation is gravely 
     undermined because of our dependence on foreign, particularly 
     Mid-East oil. Unfortunately I do not believe most people 
     understand the severe erosion and peril to our economic 
     security this dependence has placed us in. Our founding 
     fathers warned us against becoming entangled in foreign 
     affairs. I am not ignorant to how the world has become 
     smaller, but for us to be dependent on something so critical 
     as energy independence is to me unconscionable. I believe the 
     Founders roll in their graves when they look down on us and 
     see how we have trampled on the sovereignty they bequeathed 
     to us. I am hopeful that your effort includes work to help us 
     restore the freedoms and independence that has made America 
     such a remarkable phenomenon on the stage of world history. I 
     fear that we as a people and our representatives have 
     forgotten our roots the principles we were founded upon. We 
     are being carefully led down a slippery slope away from a 
     heritage enshrining freedom by federal and world nannies who 
     ``know better'', patting us on the head along the way. My 
     concern is that in the struggle to get anything 
     ``accomplished'' in Washington, principles are sometimes 
     sacrificed for the sake of expediency. Compromising principle 
     for short-term gains, in my view, is not the noble and 
     magnanimous deed that most ascribe them to be. Would that we 
     defend principles in the Churchillian fashion of ``We will 
     never surrender!''.
       I know you wish this to be brief and so after that rather 
     lengthy philosophic opener, I will now focus on some 
     specifics. These specifics are predicated that we as 
     Americans act as independent Americans, not vassals to world 
     opinion and the Benedicts amongst us.
       New Domestic Oil Reserves: I believe we are smart and 
     responsible enough to aggressively pursue new petroleum 
     sources domestically, including offshore sources, while being 
     good stewards of our environment. No intelligent human wants 
     to soil where he lives. Environmentalists were right with 
     their concerns in the past. We did stupid things while 
     chasing the dollar, ignoring the big picture impact of our 
     actions. However, today's environmental wackos have swung the 
     pendulum out of proportion. To remain a prosperous and free 
     nation, we must have energy independence. This is not an 
     option and we must move very quickly to achieve it. While 
     doing this we must find a way to foster a climate of 
     competition with existing interests rather than merely 
     providing them more tools to control this vital segment of 
     our economy.
       A Call for a Congressional Investigation: The greatest 
     export our country has given to the world is freedom 
     resulting from our remarkable experiment in self-governance. 
     The miracle of our country's success is based upon collective 
     and individual freedom. We have wise laws prohibiting the 
     undermining of competition. I believe that over time, the oil 
     industries have systematically squelched competition and any 
     technology that has had any possible chance of adversely 
     affecting their sacred cash cows. I would like to see a 
     congressional investigation into how the oil industry has 
     been involved in these things over the last 50 years. There 
     is way too much anecdotal evidence of new conservation 
     technologies being snuffed out, new forms of energy being 
     squashed, and collusion amongst oil companies and nations to 
     just simply ignore as the rantings of those engaged in fringe 
     conspiracy theories. Something just does not smell right and 
     I would feel a whole lot better if there was an honest effort 
     to focus the light of day on these issues to see if there 
     will be any cockroaches scurrying for cover.
       Nuclear Energy: I know you are aware of all of the 
     arguments for this and I will not belabor the points here. I 
     am in favor of getting the government off of our backs and 
     out of our faces so we can speed up the process of harnessing 
     the power of the atom. New research should also be 
     aggressively pursued, including fusion research for the long 
     term. Current nuclear regulations and bureaucracy have 
     strangled us and created the mess we are in today. It would 
     be an interesting exercise to pull the string on who has 
     benefited from all the obstacles that have been placed in the 
     path of the nuclear industry. While encouraging nuclear 
     energy, care must be taken so that this new form of energy 
     provides competition to those who already have one hand at 
     our throats and the other in our back pockets.
       Alternative Forms of Energy: Research should be supported 
     exploring hydrogen, wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, etc. I 
     believe this to be a national security issue and justifies 
     the involvement of the federal government to achieve it. 
     Although these will not solve our problems immediately, we 
     should be doggedly engaged in reducing our dependence on oil 
     from multiple fronts with lasting solutions.
       Conservation: While I do not believe conservation 
     adequately addresses the solution to our problems, I believe 
     it plays a part. Conservation efforts need to be encouraged 
     as long as they do not impinge upon the free market or 
     individual constitutional freedoms. The question needs to be 
     asked and then answered, ``Who has a vested interest in 
     keeping things as they are by undermining conservation 
     efforts?'' Then there are follow-up questions. Do they have 
     the means to impose their wills? If the answer is yes, how 
     and where have they done so? These same questions can also be 
     applied to our lack of progress in moving toward alternate 
     non-petroleum energy sources, including nuclear.
       Political: I believe there are very powerful forces at play 
     benefitting those who currently have money, influence, and 
     power, maintaining and advancing their interests. I believe 
     this to be the root problem of our energy situation. Unless 
     this is addressed, I do not believe we will accomplish any 
     lasting cure. We may win a minor skirmish here and there and 
     deflect or delay the end result, but unless we attack the 
     heart of the problem, in my opinion, we will lose the battle. 
     The battle is over freedom. It is an ancient battle that has 
     been waged from before the foundations of the earth. You are 
     in a unique position to make a difference and what little 
     ability and support I can give to you in that struggle is 
     yours to draw from. I do not envy you if you choose to engage 
     this problem head on but I hope that you recognize the truth 
     in what I am saying. Much is at stake. You would risk much in 
     attempting to tackle it. My prayers are with you.
       Thanks for listening and soliciting input on this issue. I 
     wish you good luck and

[[Page S4569]]

     pledge you my support in this Herculean effort if you so 
     choose to fully engage yourself in it.
     Keith, Rigby.

                          ____________________