[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12171]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             HAMMERED BY THE HIGH COST OF FUEL AND GASOLINE

  (Ms. FALLIN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. FALLIN. Mr. Speaker, families and businesses are being hammered 
by the high cost of fuel and gasoline. This issue is not a Democratic 
issue or a Republican issue, it's an American issue. It's an issue that 
our families and our consumers and our businesses want us to address, 
and that is the rising cost of gasoline.
  A CNN poll recently stated that more than half of Americans are being 
forced to cut back significantly on their household spending. Another 
news report stated that 10 percent of the American companies are 
expecting to cut back their workforce.
  One other national company stated that it was cutting 15 percent of 
its white collar jobs over the next 2 months. Families in my district 
can barely afford to commute to work. I had one family tell me that 
between the father commuting to his job, and the mother to her job, and 
the two children back and forth to college and high school, that they 
are spending $700 a month on gasoline.
  Parents are struggling with buying groceries, food costs. Family 
farms are struggling. They are trying to get their products to the 
market with the high cost of fuel, which has tripled. Small businesses 
are struggling with their services and their products and their 
customers that have decreased.
  The question we have to ask ourselves is what kind of future will our 
children and our grandchildren have if this Congress takes no action to 
produce more U.S. energy. The lack of production of sufficient U.S. 
energy is dangerous for our national economy and dangerous for our U.S. 
national security.

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