Gas Prices

Floor Speech

Mr. ROGERS of Alabama. I want to talk today about gas prices.

I represent a poor, rural congressional district where, unlike in the big cities, you have to have an automobile to get around. In the 10 years I've been in Congress, I have not had any issue that has upset my constituents more, including the wars, than the gas prices we had 3 years ago. Yet here we are back in the same situation, with the prices of $105 for a barrel and $3.75 for a gallon of gas, and nothing has been done over the last 3 years by this administration to deal with this issue. More recently, the Keystone pipeline, which would have helped bring a lot more oil into the marketplace by bringing it down from Canada to our refineries on the coast, has been denied by the President.
He needs to be doing some things to help us. He says that people say, Drill, drill, drill, and that that won't solve our problem. Well, the fact is it might have if we'd started 3 years ago when we had the last burst of high gas prices. He's right, it won't help deal with the current problem, but this is going to continue to be a perpetual problem if he doesn't make some changes. He needs to authorize the drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and in ANWR, and he needs to pass the Keystone pipeline.

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