Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act
FEDERAL PRICE GOUGING PREVENTION ACT -- (House of Representatives - June 24, 2008)
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Mr. HENSARLING. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I certainly regret I didn't have an opportunity to negotiate a Popsicle with the gentleman from Massachusetts. I am sure that would have been an interesting experience; about as interesting as this experience is in debating a bill which I feel has a lot to do with feel-good politics, a bill that is particularly unworkable, I fear may lead to de facto price controls, and really takes our attention off of the challenge that we face, and that is to increase American production of American energy.
As much as Members of Congress might like to do it, in over 200 years I have yet to see the ability to repeal the laws of supply and demand. And so
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again, I am sure the gentleman from Michigan is very sincere, and I know that he has worked on similar legislation for quite some time, but when we talk about price gouging and an emergency situation, what are we doing to bring down the price of gas at the pump today.
Instead, we have a piece of legislation that is going to allow Federal regulators, bureaucrats that according to the gentleman from Massachusetts, appear to be the savior of the Nation, to tell us what is, quote, ``unconscionably excessive,'' and ``taking unfair advantage'' related to ``an energy emergency to increase prices unreasonably.'' So now we are going to have a Federal bureau come in and tell us what are reasonable prices and reasonable situations.
The FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, after Katrina researched this issue. They could find very little evidence of it. We have unconscionably high gas prices in America, but it has everything to do with a Congress that wants to put its head in the sand and produce no energy.
Our friends from the other side of the aisle, the Democrats, since taking over the energy policy of the Nation, since taking over the economic policy of the Nation 18 months ago, have overseen gas prices that are now 75 percent higher. They have attempted to beg their way, beg OPEC to somehow produce more and bring down the cost of energy. Well, if we can't beg them, maybe we should sue them. We have had legislation to sue OPEC. We are going to sue for lower prices at the pump.
Well, if that doesn't work, maybe we can tax. Let's tax oil producers. Well, Mr. Speaker, the only challenge with that is once you tax them, they turn around and put it in the price of the product, and the poor, beleaguered consumer who is going to the convenience store trying to decide do I buy a gallon of milk or do I buy a gallon of gas, he ends up paying for it. I mean, these are policies that are out of the 1970s. President Carter and a Democrat Congress tried them; they failed. We became more dependent using these types of policies on foreign sources of energy.
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Mr. HENSARLING. We have tried these policies. It is deja vu all over again. What our friends on the other side of the aisle won't do is open up ANWR where we know we have half of the Nation's proven reserves. Almost 85 percent of our deep sea energy resources have been put out of bounds.
Listen, we all agree, we need to develop renewables. We need to develop alternative sources of energy, but people have to go to work every day and take the children to school every day. This bill does nothing to help them. We need to produce American energy in America today.
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