[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9723-9724]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ENERGY PRICES

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, first, let me say how pleased I am to 
follow the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania, hearing him talk 
about his native son, to whom I think it is fair to say he bears some 
resemblance.
  But I have another topic today, which is the cost of gasoline in 
Rhode Island. In Rhode Island today, a gallon of regular unleaded costs 
$3.84 on average, according to AAA's daily report. That price is nearly 
40 cents higher than it was 1 month ago. It is almost 77 cents higher 
than it was a year ago. I had a Rhode Island visitor to my office last 
week who runs a little oil company in Bristol. He reported his oil 
supply costs have gone up 60 cents in 2 weeks. By the way, it is 
springtime.
  When I was home over the weekend, I saw prices for regular gas at 
$3.89 and super at $4.12. High gas prices have been over all the news 
in the last several weeks in Rhode Island and across the country. But 
this problem did not emerge overnight. It has built up over the 7\1/2\ 
years of the Bush administration.
  Since President Bush took office in 2001, gas prices in Rhode Island 
have more than doubled--a price hike of more than $2 for every gallon. 
Seven years of two oil men in the White House has left Rhode Islanders 
facing the highest gas prices they have seen since the fuel crisis days 
of 1981.
  The steady and steep rise in the price of gasoline is forcing many 
working families in Rhode Island to make choices that would have seemed 
unimaginable only a few months ago, choices that are harsh and cold: A 
mother walks home from work through pouring rain because she can only 
afford to spend $10 a week on gasoline; a man cuts down on buying gas 
so he will have enough to pay for his prescriptions. Families in South 
County are hungry but have to think twice about the gas to drive to the 
food pantry to pick up food for their families.
  One man told the Providence Journal:

       The food is expensive, the clothes are expensive--I've got 
     medication. I don't know what will happen--every week, 
     everything is more expensive.

  For too many families in our Ocean State, when everything is more 
expensive, some things get left out: Only half a tank of gas this week, 
less money for groceries, no new clothes for the kids.
  Working Rhode Island families do not have an extra $2,000 in their 
annual family budget to spend on gas, and that is how much more they 
are paying now than they did in 2001 when Bush took office. Bush-McCain 
economics have left these families struggling to make ends meet, 
wondering how they will pay the bills if a child gets sick or the 
plumbing breaks. They do not have an extra $30 or $40 or $50 to pour 
into their gas tanks every week. But still gas prices go up, and 
families already stretched to the limit are stretched even further.
  These Rhode Islanders and millions like them all across this country 
need help, and they need it now. They are looking to us in Congress for 
answers.
  Last week, Congress passed legislation taking a key first step--
shutting off the gush of oil flowing into the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve. This massive stockpile of crude oil owned by the Federal 
Government, maintained in the event of a disruption in fuel supplies or 
other such emergency, has a capacity of 727 million barrels of oil. 
Right now, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is about 97 percent full. 
Yet the Bush administration continues to pump between 70,000 and 80,000 
barrels of oil every day into massive underground caverns. 
Unsurprisingly, the administration actually wants to double the size of 
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 1.5 billion barrels, even as 
millions of Americans struggle with record fuel prices. Amazing. At a 
time when American families are cutting back on food and other 
necessities in order to fill their gas tank, President Bush wants to 
reduce the supply of oil into the open market, jack up the cost of 
fuel, and further line the pockets of the big oil companies. With the 
price of gas hitting nearly $4 a gallon, those 70,000 to 80,000 barrels 
should flow into the market, not into the ground. And let's not forget 
that at today's price of over $129 a barrel--a new record price for 
crude oil as of this morning--pouring oil into the Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve costs our Government millions of our precious tax dollars every 
day.
  There are a number of things we can do right now to help provide some 
short-term relief at the pump. I have cosponsored our majority leader 
Senator Reid's Consumer First Energy Act, a plan that gets at some of 
the immediate root causes of these staggeringly high prices.
  First, we must take steps to protect American consumers from market 
speculation and price gouging. The administration's failure to regulate 
the oil futures market has left it fertile ground for speculators who 
game that market to reap high payoffs for themselves, while consumers 
pay the price.

[[Page 9724]]

  Commodities traders take advantage of lax margin requirements that 
allow them to buy oil futures for only 5 to 7 cents on the dollar 
rather than the 50-percent downpayment required for purchases of stock 
futures. Many experts have pointed to rampant speculation as one of the 
principal reasons for the inflated price of crude oil in the market.
  The Consumer First Energy Act would prevent traders of U.S. crude oil 
from routing transactions overseas to evade our limits on speculation, 
and it would require the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to 
substantially increase the margin requirement for oil futures trading.
  I particularly applaud my colleague from the State of Washington, 
Senator Cantwell, for her leadership in calling for an oil and gas 
market task force to investigate irregularities in the price of energy.
  Our bill would also prevent price gouging by giving the President the 
authority to declare an energy emergency in cases of supply disruption, 
shortage, or significant price anomalies in the market. Once such an 
emergency has been declared, it would be unlawful to set an 
``unconscionably excessive price'' for gasoline. The Federal Trade 
Commission would have the authority to enforce this provision while 
State attorneys general would have new authority to bring civil actions 
against price gougers at home.
  Outside our borders, we need to make it clear to oil-producing 
countries that colluding to fix the price of oil will not be tolerated. 
The Bush administration has failed to stand up to the nations that 
control the price of crude oil--nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, 
Nigeria, Venezuela, and others that do not have America's best 
interests at heart. OPEC nations, which produce about a third of the 
world's oil supply, stubbornly refuse to produce more oil to curb the 
rising prices, and now OPEC has said the price of a barrel of oil could 
reach $200 this year.
  With the American family now spending 10 percent of their income on 
gasoline, we cannot afford to let OPEC continue to manipulate world oil 
markets. Our plan makes it clear that colluding to fix the price of oil 
is illegal under U.S. law. The Consumer First Energy Act gives the 
Attorney General of the United States the power to bring an enforcement 
action against any company or country engaging in such conduct.
  Finally, we need to turn the tables on the big oil companies, which 
now pocket not only recordbreaking profits but huge taxpayer-funded 
subsidies that they just do not need.
  As this chart shows, the dollars we pay at the gas pump flow right 
into big oil's pockets. Last year alone, the five biggest oil 
companies--ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and 
ConocoPhillips--made $116 billion in profits. That is almost twice the 
entire budget of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Imagine if we 
were spending twice as much on our roads and bridges and public transit 
systems. ExxonMobil alone earned $40.6 billion last year--more than the 
entire Federal Highway Administration budget for 2007 and almost as 
much as the profits of the entire American credit card industry. Isn't 
it telling that as American families have struggled with the highest 
fuel costs in a generation, the biggest oil companies have celebrated 
recordbreaking profits? As our Nation slides deeper into recession, the 
oil companies' profits keep going up.
  While the oil companies are gorged with profit, stuffed with profit, 
choking on profit, the Bush administration and their Republican friends 
in Congress insist on funneling to them huge tax breaks. With profits 
exceeding $116 billion last year alone, I cannot think of a single 
industry that needs extra money less than big oil, especially when that 
industry still resists making major investments in new technology or 
renewable fuels.
  The Consumer First Energy Act will eliminate $17 billion in tax 
breaks for oil and gas companies and reallocate those tax dollars to 
renewable energy and new energy efficiency technology and would also 
create a 25-percent windfall profits tax on oil companies that do not 
invest in increased capacity and renewable energy sources. If they will 
not use their obscene profits to invest in America's energy future, 
well, we will have to, and we will.
  We know this is short-term action. We know we need to liberate 
ourselves from our dependence on oil with new energy sources and 
technologies. We know we need something along the lines of a new 
Manhattan Project or a new Apollo project. It is a matter of national 
urgency. But the American people need action now. We cannot stand by as 
millions of families struggle under the weight of skyrocketing gas 
prices. For the woman walking home from work in the rain, for the man 
on the bus to his doctor, for the student hoping one day for a hybrid 
car, for the families going without food because they cannot buy gas, 
we must take action.
  I urge my colleagues to support legislation to ease Americans' pain 
at the pump.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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