Date: 2008-06-11
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Thank you. By the way. to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. that was a very impressive topofmind overview. and your command of the facts is truly incredible. So thank you very much for that very articulate overview. We also want to stress that. in addition to laying out the problem and the shock that we have in reaction to the solution of our good friends on the other side of the aisle to drill and veto. we have not stood idly by and just said. "Well. unless we repeal these $14 billion in subsidies. then were not going to be able to do anything." We have a series of bills that mwe have passed. and I think it would be helpful for us to go through those and to tell people the efforts that were niakingsome shortterm. some longterm. This is a difficult problem to solve in the short term. It is very difficult to dramatically bring down gas prices through legislation in a shortterm way. but one of the things that we did was to pass the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Fill Suspension and Consumer Protection Act. What that does is it says to the President that he- is not to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. and that was something that the President had previously opposed. He was threatening to veto it until he realized that the increase in gas prices was so politically painful for both his administration and for his Members of Congress that he had no other choice but to finally relent and agree to sign it. There were still 25 Republicans who voted against that bill. What the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Act is designed to do is to bring gas prices down in the short term. During the rest of this year. we expect that bill to affect gas prices in the short term. We have the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act. That is a bill that will extend and expand tax incentives for renewable energy. the type of energy that we would like to go in the direction of. instead of the finite sources that the Republicans always talk about. What that bill would do is generate hundreds of thousands of green jobs. spur American innovation and business investment. and cut taxes for millions of Americans. What the provisions of that bill will do is preserve hundreds of thousands of goodpaying. greencollar American jobs. A recent study showed that allowing the renewable energy incentives to expire would lead to about .116.000 jobs being lost in the wind and. solar industries alone through the end of next year. Yet 159 Republicans voted against that legislation. Thats how latched to the oil industry they are. How about the OPEC and Big Oil companies accountability bill? We passed a bill that would combat record gas prices by authorizing lawsuits against oil cartel members for oil pricefixing as well as created an antitrust task force to crack down on oil companies that are engaged in anticompetitive behavior and market manipulation. LI 2215 You still had 84 Republicans vote against that bill. We also passed legislation. historic legislation. Mr. MURPHY. for the first time in 35 years we havepassed legislation that will require the automobile manufacturing industry to increase .fuel efficiency standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. That is the firstcongressional increase in more than three decades. Ninetysix Republicans voted against that legislation. It was signed ihto law on December 19. 2007. so we will over the long term see fuel efficiency standards improve. which. of course the automobile industry could have done years and years ago on their own. But. unfortunately. we had to cajole them along a little bit. There are two more bills I want to highlight. simply because of the shockingly large number of Republicansr that voted against those as well. You have the Renewable Energy and Conservation Tax Act. That is the bill that i cluded the repeal of this $14 billion in subsidies. It also would invest in clean and renewable energy and energy efficiency and also address a reduction in global warming. It included provisions that would generate. again. hundreds of thousands of green jobs by investing in solar energy and biodiesel jobs and protect an additional 75.000 wind industry jobs. And 174 Republicans voted against that bill. Lastly. one of the things that we wanted to make sure we protected against when it came to our energy policy was price gouging. so we passed the Energy Price Gouging Prevention Act. because it is a little bit suspect that all of these retail establishments and all of the entire oil industry suddenly and dramatically all increase prices at the same time. What a coincidence. So we thought it was important in order to provide immediate relief to consumers to give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to investigate and punish people and entities that artificially inflate the price ofenergy. and we wanted to ensure that the Federal Government had the tools it needed to adequately respond to energy emergencies and prohibit price gouging. particularly like. for example. when you have natural disasters like my State faces which we often struggle with. And 140 Republicans voted against that bill. So it is just really important that we highlight these stark differences in our policy versus the Republicans. what we support and the actions that we have taken and what the other side supports. The other side is married to the oil industry. and we would like to move. again. in a new direction. so we can invest in renewable energy-