Consumer-First Energy Act of 2008 - Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
CONSUMER-FIRST ENERGY ACT OF 2008--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - June 10, 2008)
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Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, I thank you.
I thank the Senator from Missouri for her comments. They were right on.
I rise today to call for action by the Senate on an urgent problem facing this country, facing the State of Montana: gas prices.
The national average now, we just found out last weekend, is $4 a gallon. I remember when gas was $1.46. It was not that long ago. It was before the Bush administration took over. That was before the war in Iraq, before speculators and market manipulators spiraled out of control, before that $17 billion Bush tax cut for our Nation's biggest oil companies.
These gas prices hurt. They especially hurt hard-working people in Montana and across rural America. In my State, nearly everybody has to drive to work. There are not other options. We do not have a subway system. We do not have other means of mass transit. Whether it is on a tractor or behind the wheel of a truck, a lot of folks rely on horsepower and the fuel to supply that horsepower to get their work done.
Of course, high gas prices means high prices for consumer goods. It means fewer jobs. Middle-class families are getting pinched hard by these high gas prices. For low-income folks, high gas prices are unbearable. They do not need to see headlines like in Newsweek this week to know our economy is in trouble. People are already feeling it. Yet we have seen no solutions from this administration.
I am not even convinced this administration considers rising gas prices a problem. Earlier this year, a reporter asked President Bush what advice he had to consumers facing $4 a gallon gas. He was visibly surprised and asked the reporter where he had heard that.
Well, working folks and small businesses have felt the pain for some time now. Our farmers all over rural America have known it for quite a while. Our trucking and transportation industry has felt it hard for a long time. The cost of diesel fuel that powers our tractors, our combines, and our trucks that take food to the grocery stores hit $4 back in April. It is closing in on $5. Every working family and small business and farmer and trucker is taking a hit--a big hit--on these fuel prices.
That is why I am supporting these two packages today that go to the root of the problems of high gas costs. They offer some solutions.
The Consumer-First Energy Act will go after commodity speculators who are manipulating the market. It needs to be done. It will let the Justice Department go after the illegal OPEC oil cartel in court. It needs to be done. It will put a stop to the big tax giveaways the last Congress gave to big oil, which needs to be done. It will protect consumers from price colluders and price gougers. This needs to be done.
This bill will immediately put a stop to the financial gimmicks that have driven up the cost of oil past the laws of supply and demand. If you do not think speculators are playing with the markets, and they are having a big impact, let me remind you of the Enron collapse, the dot-com bust, and the demise of the housing market. It is all happening in oil right now.
When Wall Street investment banks faced trouble a couple months ago, the Bush administration swiftly took action. But when American consumers have to tap into their savings or run up their credit card debt just to pay the price at the pump, the administration is nowhere to be seen.
The Consumer-First Energy Act is about solutions. They are solutions we need to invest in right now. We have the opportunity in the United States to drill for oil in places that make sense--eastern Montana, the western Dakotas, the Bakken field. And wouldn't you know, it is the smaller companies--not the big companies--that are going after those reserves. It is the smaller companies innovating, investing in the future, boosting domestic oil production right now, working with the folks in those regions, boosting rural economies.
My colleague, Senator Baucus, has again brought forward an energy tax package that will help extend some of the most successful and effective tax credits that are driving alternative energy development. He brought a similar package forward last year, only to have it narrowly defeated.
I hope we have a different outcome this time because our future energy system depends on new solutions, not old solutions. We have the ideas and the ambition, but we need to get on with new innovations in the marketplace.
It is time to resolve these energy costs and take a step toward solving our energy problems. We have to work together, and I am confident we can work together to find solutions to bring the costs back down.
Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
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