[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9615]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                 IT IS ALL ABOUT ENERGY, ENERGY, ENERGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Madam Speaker, it is Memorial Day weekend, and while 
gasoline prices in my district are among the Nation's highest, at well 
over $2.00 a gallon, in fact it was about $2.22 for regular, it still 
does not appear that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have any 
plans to bring relief to my constituents at the gas pump.
  While big oil is getting bigger, consumers in my district and across 
the country are getting gouged, and the President's energy plan does 
nothing to address that. Instead, the administration has proposed 
relief for its oil industry friends.
  Big oil hit the jackpot last year, thanks to consumers in Chicago and 
across the country that paved the way for big oil's record profits. The 
top oil company profits last year went up over 100 percent on the 
average from the previous year, combining for almost $50 billion in 
profits. Now Exxon Mobile is number one on the Fortune 500 list.
  None of us should be surprised at the give-aways big oil is reaping 
from this administration and the Republicans. President Bush received 
$2 million in contributions for his campaign, and the Republican Party 
received over $25 million from big oil, with Enron and Exxon Mobile 
giving the most. It looks like those companies made the right bet.
  Mr. President, I am again calling on you to persuade, in fact to 
jawbone, your friends in the industry to bring these prices down now. I 
hope you will think about that while you are relaxing at Camp David and 
my constituents are cancelling their family's summer vacations.
  Mr. OLVER. Madam Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. OLVER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois for 
yielding.
  It turns out that we are talking about a very similar sort of thing.
  I wanted to point out to people today that the President's energy 
plan utterly ignores a key fact; that if we are to put limits on global 
warming and the inevitable resulting climate change, we must cut back 
on burning fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide, the most important 
greenhouse gas, into our atmosphere.
  One of the simplest and most effective ways to reduce oil consumption 
is to increase the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks. Currently, 
cars and trucks guzzle 40 percent of all the oil used in the United 
States and they produce 20 percent of the Nation's carbon dioxide 
pollution. Improved fuel efficiency would protect consumers from higher 
prices at the gas pump, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and 
decrease carbon dioxide emissions.
  The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest), from the Republican 
Party, and I have together introduced, with bipartisan sponsors, a bill 
that would require light trucks and SUVs to meet the same fuel 
efficiency standards as passenger cars, gradually, by the year 2007. 
Once fully implemented, that would save the U.S. 1 million barrels of 
oil every day, reduce oil imports by 10 percent, and prevent over 200 
million tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere every year.
  Before we consider drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or 
other ecologically sensitive areas, which could include the coastline 
of Florida on the West Coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico, we 
should first use common sense solutions like improving fuel efficiency, 
by simply improving the gas mileage that our cars and trucks achieve.




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