[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6564]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      THE PRICE OF A BARREL OF OIL

  (Mr. SHIMKUS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, from Congress Daily AM on Monday, 21 April, 
the heading was: Florida delight as talks intensify behind closed doors 
on several issues. Members negotiate behind the scenes to finish a farm 
bill conference and plan their maneuvers for moving a war supplemental 
bill and more possible tradeoffs to move a Colombia Free Trade 
Agreement. Funny. No talk about gasoline, no talk about the high energy 
prices. The number one issue affecting consumers today and the 
pocketbooks of mom and dad and driving kids to events is the high cost 
of gasoline.
  When this majority took over, the price of a barrel of crude oil was 
$58.31. Today--actually, this is wrong--it was updated at $117. It did 
get to $118 a barrel. When you don't have a plan, you plan to fail. I 
would hope that the Democrat majority would, in their negotiations, 
talk about how they are going to address the high cost of energy in 
this country.

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