[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 13273]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               GAS PRICES: AN ENERGY AND ECONOMIC CRISIS

  (Mr. BURTON of Indiana asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Well, Mr. Speaker, another week has gone by, 
and the American people are paying over $4 a gallon for gasoline, and 
it's going up because we're getting into vacation time. And we're going 
home. We're leaving this body. This Congress, our majority party, 
hasn't done one thing or hasn't even made an attempt to lower the gas 
prices in this country.
  We have the oil here in America. We have it off the Outer Continental 
Shelf and in Alaska at the ANWR. We have coal shale. We can develop it. 
We can get oil to the market within 2 or 3 years if we could lower the 
price of oil immediately once we address the issue because competition 
around the world will see we're going to drill for oil, and they will 
start lowering the price, and gas prices will come down, but we have to 
act.
  Here we go with one more week. We're going home with nothing having 
been done, and the people of this country continue to pay these 
exorbitant prices for gasoline at the pump.
  So, if I were talking to the American people, I would just say to 
them today: Contact your Congressman, contact your Senator, and tell 
them you want something done quickly because this is not only an energy 
crisis; it's an economic crisis.

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