Skyrocketing Energy Prices

Statement

Skyrocketing Energy Prices

Day after day, record-high oil and gasoline prices are hurting millions of American consumers and businesses. Unless something is done to make energy more affordable, the record-high prices will continue to reverberate throughout our economy in Michigan and across the nation, increasing the prices of transportation, food, manufacturing and everything in between. Skyrocketing energy prices are a threat to our economic and national security, and the time is long past for action.

Rising energy prices increase the cost of getting to work and taking our children to school; traveling by car, truck, air and rail; and growing the food we eat and transporting it to market. Rising energy prices increase the cost of producing the medicines we need for our health, heating our homes and offices, generating electricity, and manufacturing countless industrial and consumer products. Rising diesel prices have placed a crushing burden upon our nation's truckers, farmers, manufacturers, and other industries. To make matters worse, our energy costs are rising much more quickly than energy costs in other countries, directly threatening our ability to compete around the globe.

Because the Bush administration has proved itself unable and unwilling to take the necessary steps to provide affordable energy supplies to the American people, it is up to Congress to try to jumpstart a comprehensive solution to skyrocketing energy prices.

I have been advocating a variety of measures to address the rampant speculation and lack of regulation of energy markets that have contributed to sky high energy prices. The first step is for Congress to pass legislation I introduced late last year that will put a cop back on the beat in unregulated energy markets to ensure these markets are free from excessive speculation and manipulation.

A second step is to stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) until prices are lower. It simply defies common sense for the U.S. government to be acquiring oil at $125 a barrel, in a time of tight supply, just before the peak driving season, and put it into the SPR, which is already over 95 percent full. That is why I voted for a bill that passed with the support of 97 senators to suspend additional deposits into the SPR. This legislation can save the taxpayers money and relieve some of the pressure on the oil markets that is driving prices relentlessly higher.

A third step to combat consistently rising gas prices is to develop advanced vehicle technologies and alternative energy sources that will significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I have supported efforts to increase our production of renewable fuels and to do that in a way that will also reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. But to succeed in these efforts, we need significantly greater federal investment in biofuel technologies.

Fourth, we need to make sure that the burden of higher energy prices is being shared equally. Currently, it is falling hardest upon those who can least afford it. Large oil companies are reaping record profits at the expense of the average American who ultimately bears the full burden of these price increases. We need to institute a windfall profits tax on the oil companies. This could encourage them to invest their windfall profits into things that will increase our own domestic energy.

Skyrocketing energy prices are tying up our already weak economy in knots, and causing financial pain to working families throughout this country. We can fight back against exorbitantly high energy prices. But it will take all our energy - and determination - to do it.

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