[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6166]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       McCAIN DOESN'T UNDERSTAND

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, the presumptive Republican nominee for President, 
John McCain, wasn't kidding when he said he didn't understand the 
economy. He has proposed a gas tax holiday. Now let's think about it 
for a minute. Gas today costs three times as much as it did in 1993, 
but the Federal gas tax hasn't changed since 1993. So what is the cause 
of the big run-up?
  Well, it might be the $40 billion record profit at ExxonMobil and the 
$400 million exit given to their last CEO. That might be part of it.
  It might be the OPEC cartel colluding to drive up the price of oil 
and restrict demand. Or it could be the hedge fund speculators and 
others on Wall Street driving up the cost unnecessarily so they can 
make money.
  But the nominee of the Grand Oil Party, the GOP, he's not going to 
take on Big Oil. He's not going to take on Wall Street. He's not going 
to take on OPEC. What he is going to do is cut Federal investment in 
our crumbling infrastructure, put hundreds of thousands of construction 
workers out of jobs, and condemn even more Americans to being jammed on 
congested highways that need improvement and bridges that are 
collapsing where we don't have the money to rebuild.

                          ____________________