[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 7823]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         WE NEED AN ENERGY PLAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Missouri (Mr. Akin) for 1 minute.
  Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  In the last little more than a year, gasoline prices have gone up 
$1.33 cents a gallon. That's a larger increase than what we've had over 
the previous 5 years before that. The Democrat leadership said that 
they had a plan at that time, this is a year ago, to keep the gas 
prices from going up. Yet the gas prices have gone up.
  Now I don't think the American public wants us to bicker between 
parties. They want us to be solving problems. And I don't believe it's 
the Democrats' fault necessarily that the gas prices have gone up 
internationally. But what is a problem is that we're not dealing with 
the problem. What we should be talking about is how do we move off of 
our dependence on foreign oil to American energy? What we should be 
seeing would be movement in the direction, depending on which way 
people want to go, additional refinement capacity. There have been no 
new refineries built in over 30 years. Investment in new nuclear 
technology. Our nuclear technology is old, many, many years old. It's a 
good source of energy. The idea of getting liquid fuel from coal. We 
have tremendous coal resources. Shouldn't there be something being done 
in that area?
  But nothing in any of these areas. A lack of a plan is unacceptable. 
It's not the Democrats' fault that gas prices go up, but it is a 
problem when we don't have a plan.

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