Gas Crisis

GAS CRISIS -- (House of Representatives - April 26, 2006)

(Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, if you liked the administration and the Republican Congress' response to Hurricane Katrina, you are going to love the response to this gas crisis. Because while folks said they could not anticipate that the levees would be topped, when you do what the administration has done, you should have been anticipating $3 plus, $3.25, and $3.35 gasoline at the pump.

When you go into secret energy meetings, as the Vice President did, to devise an energy strategy and come out with a giveaway to the energy industry; when you have a President who refuses to act when Enron was stealing billions of dollars from the economy, telling the oil industry you can go ahead and do the same thing because I will not act; when three times Democrats stood proudly to have a bill to allow the FTC to investigate this price gouging and the Republicans voted in lockstep against it, you could anticipate the levees would be topped, and you could anticipate that the oil companies would run rampant with the price of gasoline.

Now, how has this President responded? He wants to do this thing with a slow one-half of one-third of 1 percent increase in production to do something about it. If your house is on fire, the President would bring you a thimbleful of water, and that is the only assistance we are getting. We need real action, not these baby steps.

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