[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8400-8401]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       CONSUMER FIRST ENERGY ACT

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, on Friday, oil hit yet another record high. 
I do not know what it is today. It dropped 50 cents last night to more 
than $125 a barrel. But on Friday it was above $126 a barrel. If it 
drops--which we hope it does--to $110, $105, $100, $90, $95, it should 
not be a day of celebration. Oil is a difficult problem for our 
country.
  The average price of a gallon of gasoline in America today is now 
above $3.60 a gallon. That is the average. In Nevada, it is more than 
$3.80 a gallon. Diesel--the fuel that moves the goods we buy--has hit 
$4.15, on an average, around the country.
  Seven years ago, when President Bush took office, the average price 
for a gallon of gasoline was about $1.50. Now it is 2\1/2\ times more 
than that.
  At first, the steady rise of gas prices was a nuisance. Then it 
became a burden. Now it is a full-blown crisis. More than 7 in 10 
Americans now say gas prices have created financial hardships in their 
lives. Nevadans are paying, on average, $3,000 more per year for 
gasoline than they did 7 years ago.
  Millions of working people all across America are now spending the 
first few hours of their workday earning back what they paid for their 
commute. It costs more than ever to heat and cool our homes. Everything 
costs more. We have a problem with these people who are paying--in 
Nevada, $3,000--more than they did 7 years ago for gasoline. It affects 
their house payments, car payments, their medicine, whether they can 
send their kids to college. It is very difficult--what kind of 
groceries they buy. It wipes out most vacations.
  School districts in Nevada and around the country are forced to make 
cutbacks in the classroom because the cost of school buses has never 
been higher. I met with the officials of commercial airlines in the 
United States a short time ago in my office across the hall. They said 
almost 50 percent of the cost of flying an airplane in America today is 
fuel. It is not that way in Europe because the dollar is so weak they 
get it much cheaper than we do.
  Small businesses are struggling under the burden of record-high 
shipping costs. The $60, $80 or more Americans are paying at the pump 
means less money for other necessities--I have mentioned some of them--
but the gas pump is just the tip of the iceberg. Almost every part of 
the economy is weighed down by the price of oil and gas.
  The American people deserve both short-term and long-term ends to 
this crisis. Last year, Congress took the first step by passing new 
energy legislation that raised fuel economy standards for the first 
time in almost 30 years and required the Bush administration to 
investigate market price manipulation. But Republicans blocked our 
efforts to include a mandate for clean, renewable electricity, and we 
have seen very little action from the White House on market 
manipulation.
  It is clearly time to take the next step by passing the Consumer 
First Energy Act, which will help lower prices in the short term and 
continues to curb our addiction and invest in renewable energy to avoid 
an even greater crisis in the long term.
  First, this legislation includes a provision that ends the billions 
of dollars in tax breaks for oil companies whose executives have been 
hauling record profits while we pay record prices. Oil executives are 
making fortunes. The oil companies--these international cartels is what 
I call them--are making more money than any companies in the history of 
the world. Seven years ago, Vice President Cheney invited oil 
executives to the White House to write our national energy policy. Is 
it any surprise that 7 years later the only ones who have benefited 
from that policy are the oil companies?
  The second piece of our legislation forces the oil companies to do 
their part by investing some of their profits in clean and affordable 
alternative energy. If we aggressively promote innovation in solar, 
wind, biofuels, and geothermal energies, we can help lower energy 
costs, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs right here in America, 
and strengthen our national security by reducing our dependence on oil-
producing nations.
  The third provision: We protect the American people from price 
gougers and greedy oil traders who manipulate the market. Part of the 
reason for the record-high prices of oil is that market traders are 
bidding prices up for their own amusement and profit. If you go buy a 
share of General Motors stock, you pay a margin of 50 percent. If you 
buy 100,000 gallons of fuel or barrels of oil, you pay a 3- to 5-
percent margin. They have pushed these prices up remarkably with their 
speculation. They make out like bandits, but the rest of us have to 
face the real-life consequences of their recklessness.
  Now, we also have a provision to temporarily stop filling the 
national Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is already 97 percent full, 
to increase supply and lower prices. We are told it increases prices by 
as much as 5 cents a gallon. When oil prices come down significantly 
from their current levels, we can continue filling the Reserve. For 
now, 97 percent capacity is sufficient.
  Tomorrow for our vote, we are going to take this fourth provision out 
of our energy package and we are going to vote on that. That will be 
our second vote. It is important that everyone

[[Page 8401]]

vote for this. This should be bipartisan. The Republicans wrote a 
letter to the President--some Republican Senators--saying: Mr. 
President, stop pumping that oil into the Reserve. I hope they will 
join with us tomorrow so we can get past the 60-vote margin that is 
required here to pass legislation.
  Finally, our plan stands up to OPEC and countries that are colluding 
together to keep oil prices sky high. This is a provision that has been 
pushed by Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin for a long time, and that is 
in our legislation. Global commerce requires global leadership. Oil-
producing nations are earning billions of dollars from American 
consumers. For most of these countries, the oil trade is their 
overwhelming source of income. It is time to use some diplomatic 
pressure to increase production and lower prices.
  Our legislation does exactly what it promises: It ends more than 7 
years of Bush-Cheney energy policy that has lined the pockets of 
modern-day oil barons and left the American people to pay the bill. Is 
it a silver bullet? Of course not. Is it a bill that will solve all of 
our energy problems? Of course not. But it is a good piece of 
legislation.
  The United States has less than 3 percent of the oil reserves in the 
world. That counts ANWR and offshore. So we can't produce our way out 
of it. Should we produce more out of the 3 percent we have? Of course. 
We are going to continue to work on that. But we consume 25 to 30 
percent of all of the oil in the world, even though our population 
probably doesn't justify that.
  This legislation is an important step, one that will make a 
difference in the short term and in the long term. It offers new 
thinking, new investment, and a new direction, not more of the same. So 
I urge my Republican colleagues to join us in passing this important 
piece of legislation starting tomorrow by passing a law that will tell 
the President: No, you can no longer pay $125 a barrel to put oil into 
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Save that for later.
  Finally, Mr. President, we are going to vote tomorrow on an important 
piece of legislation. Woven deep within our collective memory of every 
major American disaster is the image of first responders who risk their 
lives to save others. September 11 is graphically illustrative of that 
fact. The firefighter who goes back into a burning building saving an 
elderly man or woman, the medic who tends to victims as ambulances race 
to the scene, the police officer who cordons off an area and redirects 
those in danger to safety--every one of those first responders is a 
hero. Yet far too often their heroism is overlooked. This week, we are 
going to have an opportunity to honor their service with legislation 
that will keep them safe and will save lives and will also allow them 
to receive the fair pay and benefits they deserve.
  Senator Kennedy and Senator Gregg have done an outstanding job 
writing this bipartisan bill. Their work is a model for what we can 
accomplish when we abandon partisanship and embrace the common good.
  This legislation is a bill all Senators can and should support. This 
legislation provides first responders the dignity and respect they have 
greatly earned by guaranteeing them the right to collectively bargain. 
That is a right most private sector employees and public sector 
employees in 29 States plus the District of Columbia already have. It 
will mean better wages, hours, working conditions, and benefits for 
those we count on in a time of crisis. We may never be able to put a 
fair price on heroism, but this legislation is certainly a start.
  Firefighters--not just those from New York but from surrounding 
areas--suffered the greatest losses on September 11. The recent 
tragedies such as the fire last summer in Charleston, SC, that took the 
lives of nine firefighters or the senseless loss of two firefighters in 
Roxbury, MA, last September serve as a reminder of the dangers these 
men and women face every time they go to work.
  Last Friday, I was in Philadelphia, and I was going to a place called 
the Free Library. It was a rainy day. Of course, that cut the crowd 
down a little bit. But the thing that cut the crowd down more than 
anything else, that brought traffic to a standstill was the funeral of 
a police officer. He stopped some people who had robbed a bank, and one 
of them stepped out of the car with an assault rifle, an automatic 
weapon--not a semiautomatic weapon but an automatic weapon--and he was 
shot many times and killed.
  Police officers put their lives on the line all the time. They do it 
for us. There is not much we can do usually to put a fair price on that 
heroism, but tomorrow we can do that. This legislation is the start of 
that.
  This right to collectively bargain respects States rights. The 29 
States already providing the right to collective bargaining for public 
safety officers would not be affected. The 21 States that don't provide 
for collective bargaining would have the opportunity to establish their 
own systems or they may ask the Federal Labor Relations Authority to 
assist in the process.
  This legislation guarantees fairness in public safety by expressly 
outlawing strikes, lockouts, and all forms of work stoppage. That is 
why this is a good bipartisan bill. By guaranteeing collective 
bargaining and providing better wages and working conditions, this will 
improve public safety.
  It is without any question that first responders who are paid fairly 
and treated with respect will keep their jobs longer and perform more 
efficiently and save the taxpayers money. Communities across America 
can rest more easily knowing their local police, firefighters, 
paramedics, and other first responders have long and sustained ties to 
the neighborhoods in which they work.
  I met with police and firefighters from Nevada and around the country 
to discuss this legislation. They, along with their brothers and 
sisters across all of America, are just the same as those in Nevada to 
whom I have spoken. They want us to do everything we can to urge all 
Senators to take action. They welcome this opportunity to receive 
support to do their jobs more effectively and to help them provide for 
their families and protect our families. I urge my colleagues to stand 
with America's brave first responders by supporting the Public Safety 
Employer-Employee Cooperation Act.

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