[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 5924-5925]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               GAS PRICES

  (Mrs. BLACKBURN asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam Speaker, gas prices are the topic right now, so 
let us talk about energy, because we have heard some of our liberal 
colleagues take great delight in talking about the gas prices, and 
probably they should. It is their policies that have led us to this 
point.
  The Democrat Party in this country is very tightly tied to 
environmental extremist organizations; and since the 1970s, they have 
been working day and night to halt domestic exploration for oil.
  We cannot search for oil on the Outer Continental Shelf, meanwhile 
Cuba and Venezuela are. We cannot explore for oil in ANWR because it 
might hurt the caribou. We haven't built a refinery since 1976 because 
environmentalists use their influence over liberal policymakers to 
create a regulatory and permitting scheme that makes it virtually 
impossible to get approval. That is why we have fewer refineries today.
  Madam Speaker, the House passed a bill last year to make price 
gouging a Federal crime and to streamline the process for building a 
refinery. Not a single Democrat in this body voted for that, and now it 
is languishing in the Senate.

[[Page 5925]]

  It is time for action. That is the reality of the situation.

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