Date: 2008-06-26
Speaker: JOHN YARMUTH (democrat)
Chamber: H

"Mr. Speaker. my constituent. like yours. paid over $3 a gallon for gas last year. Isnt that enough?" Absolutely its enough. But today we are paying over $4 a gallon. and the reason we are is because we refuse to use our own natural resources for the health of this country and. like so many of these other statements said. for the national security of this country. STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES: "Critics of H.R. 6 argue this measure will place an. undue burden on oil companies which will lead to higher gas prices." Okay. We must have been right because what happened was after H.R. 6. with gas being $2.23 a gallon. today it is $4.08. What we are trying to do. before I yield to some of my colleagues. we have that petition that my friend from Indiana and I have been talking about. and what it says is "I will vote to increase oil production to lower the price of gas." And what that means is bringing onshore drilling online. offshore drilling online. deepwater oil online. and bring in more refineries online. If we bring onshore oil online. it will save anywhere from 70 cents to $1.60 a gallon. To bring deepwater oil online. the Outer Continental Shelf. 90 cents to $2.50 a gallon. To bring new refineries online. and not one has been built since 1976. would save anywhere from 15 to 45 cents. The gas tax holiday. 18 cents. To halt oil shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. a nickel. Now. I have got some more quotes on that. and. of course. this was passed in the House probably back in May. We stopped those shipments in July. and so we should find out if its going to bring it down a nickel a gallon. But if you look at what the Democrat plan was. and this is that commonsense plan. Im assuming. but "sue OPEC." we have had a lot of success with that. "Launch the seventh investigation to price gougers." "Launch the fourth investigation to speculators." Now. we put that lipstick on that pig today with the speculation bill. that we just really passed something thats already on the books. "Twenty billion dollars in new taxes on oil producers." I can hardly wait to see what that does to lower the price of gas. And weve seen that just not even putting the new taxes on them but just taking tax relief away from them has caused gas to almost double. And then of course theyve got "halt oil shipments." which is a nickel. You can see that if we put. our policies in Ilace that gas today would be somewhere around $2.10. and thats using very conservative savings over there. And you can see that if this works. and we dont even know that this is going to work. it would be about $4.03. So we hope that we will get 300 signatures on this petition to show the American people that we are not going to lie here in a fetal position or just keep doing repetitious things to make you think we are doing something. So if you could just go to the house.gov/ westmoreland and look at it. We had 45.000 hits on it. Madam Speaker. last night. And we have had a couple of Members that have come to us and said. We have heard and we want to go from the "would not sign" to the "sign." So we cant do it. Madam Speaker. if people arent going to be involved with us because we dont have that much influence over the majority. i would like to yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina. my classmate (Ms. Foxx).