[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 5990]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE PELOSI PREMIUM

  The SPEAKER. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from North Carolina 
(Ms. Foxx) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
  I'm here to talk about the Pelosi Premium. Once a nightmare scenario, 
$4 gasoline may soon become a harsh reality on Speaker Pelosi's watch. 
Today, drivers are paying a dollar more per gallon at the pump than 
when the Speaker took office. This Pelosi Premium is hitting working 
families hard at a time when they are confronting soaring costs, a 
slowing economy and a housing crunch. Middle-class families and their 
increasingly tight budgets need relief, not more broken promises. We're 
operating under a set of broken promises.
  Speaker Pelosi promised the American people a commonsense plan to 
lower gasoline prices, but House Democrats have not only failed to 
offer any meaningful solutions, they've put forward policies that will 
have precisely the opposite effect. We cannot tax middle-class 
families' and truckers' tanks from empty to full.
  Speaker  Nancy Pelosi on 4-18-2006: The Democrats have a plan to 
lower gas prices.
  Speaker  Nancy Pelosi on 4-24-2006: Democrats have a commonsense plan 
to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices.
  August 4, 2007, Democrats have voted those four times to raise taxes 
in the 110th Congress: January 18, August 4, December 6, 2007, February 
27, 2008. The Pelosi Premium continues.
  Since Democrats took control of Congress, gasoline prices have 
skyrocketed by more than $1 per gallon forcing worker families to pay a 
Pelosi Premium at the pump. With reports indicating gasoline prices are 
beginning to hit $4 per gallon, the Pelosi Premium couldn't come at a 
worse time for middle-class families already being squeezed by the 
soaring costs of living.
  The price we pay for both gasoline and oil is fundamentally an issue 
of supply and demand, but while U.S. oil consumption has largely 
remained the same over the past few years, world oil consumption has 
spiraled to 84 million barrels a day, up nearly 25 percent from 68 
million barrels a decade ago. This results in a tremendous increase in 
prices.
  As you are fully aware, gas prices have increased by $1.05 per gallon 
since Nancy Pelosi took control of Congress on January 4, 2007. This 
represents an increase of nearly 45 percent.
  At the same time that world oil consumption has skyrocketed, access 
to world energy supplies has struggled to keep pace. Nowhere has this 
trend been worse than in the United States which stands today as the 
only industrialized Nation in the world that refuses to tap 85 percent 
of our available deep sea energy resources.
  While the U.S. has held its consumption steady, more needs to be done 
to build a bridge from where we are today to the renewable and 
alternative energy future in which we all want to live. In fact, under 
the Democrats in Congress, we've gone from 50 percent of our oil 
imports coming from OPEC to 57 percent coming from OPEC in 1 year.
  But before we achieve those things in the future, we'll have to 
figure out a way to live, work, and prosper in the present. For too 
many Democrats, growing our economy today, tomorrow, and next month 
isn't much of a priority. In fact, the majority has voted four separate 
times to raise energy taxes in the 110th Congress. But even if we had 
access to all of the oil in the world, we would need places to turn 
that oil into gasoline. Regrettably, the U.S. hasn't built a new 
refinery in 32 years and, in fact, has successfully shut down several 
at that time. The results are stunning. Today, the U.S. has only 149 
operable oil refineries compared with 321 in 1981. That means roughly 
double the demand now must be handled with half of the number of 
refineries.
  Let's remember this fall the broken promises made in 2006 and the 
Pelosi Premium which is costing us so much money.

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