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Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: florida Posts: 1,503
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Originally Posted by Greyfoxx  I recieved this from our Oregon Congressmen yesterday in response to my letter to him a week ago. Dear Don: Thanks for your message expressing concerns about rising gas prices. I appreciate hearing from you and share your concerns. I have reintroduced legislation, the Gasoline Price Stabilization Act, H.R. 1500, to combat rising gas prices. My legislation includes both short-term and long-term strategies. The short-term strategies are necessary to protect consumers from gouging and market manipulation by oil companies, the OPEC cartel and financial speculators. The long-term strategies are necessary to reduce our nation's overall dependence on oil. Given limited worldwide supplies of oil (and even more limited supplies here at home - the U.S. has only two percent of the world's projected oil reserves, which means we'll become more dependent on foreign sources of oil as these reserves are depleted), we need to use oil more efficiently and develop alternative sources of energy immediately. My legislation: - Requires the President to file a trade complaint with the WTO against OPEC for illegally colluding to raise oil prices, which violates global trade rules. - Imposes a windfall profits tax on oil companies to decrease the incentive to gouge consumers. - Authorizes the use of the strategic petroleum reserve (a federal reserve of 700 million barrels of oil), as needed, to combat market manipulation and supply problems. Releasing oil from the federal stockpile will help ensure that supply disruptions (whether artificial or real) don't lead to price spikes. - Authorizes the Secretary of Energy to establish minimum inventory levels for producers, refiners, and marketers of crude oil and petroleum products in order to limit the impact unexpected supply disruptions have on prices. - Reinstates the ban on exporting oil from Alaska. - Puts a moratorium on oil company mergers (the non-partisan General Accounting Office reported 2,600 mergers in the U.S. petroleum industry since the mid-1990s - by one measure, four companies control 74 percent of the gasoline market in Oregon). It also creates a commission to investigate the impact mergers are having on prices and to make recommendations to restore competition in the petroleum industry. - Establishes a commission to study and report on the concentration of ownership of all aspects of exploring, refining, distributing and selling crude oil and petroleum products. - Mandates the average fuel economy standards to be increased to 37 mpg by 2017 and 40 mpg by 2022. - Requires the federal fleet of vehicles achieve an average fuel economy that is higher than the baseline average. The federal fleet would have to achieve a fuel economy of 3 miles per gallon higher than the average by 2010, and 6 miles per gallon higher than the average by 2013. The House of Representatives has passed several bills that will help relieve gas prices. We are awaiting Senate action on many of these bills. H.R. 2264, the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels (NOPEC) Act, passed the House on May 22, 2007. This legislation enables the Department of Justice to take legal action against OPEC-controlled entities for participating in oil cartels that drive up oil prices globally and in the United States. H.R. 1252, the Energy Price Gouging Act, passed the House on May 23, 2007. This legislation willreduce the burden of rising gas prices on American families, providing immediate relief to consumers by giving the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) the authority to investigate and punish those who artificially inflate the price of energy. It ensures the federal government has the tools it needs to adequately respond to energy emergencies and prohibit price gouging - with a priority on refineries and big oil companies. H.R. 5351, the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2008 passed the House on February 27th 2008.This legislation will end unnecessary subsidies to Big Oil companies and invest in clean, renewable energy and energy efficiency. It will extend and expand tax incentives for renewable electricity, energy and fuel, as well as for plug-in hybrid cars, and energy efficient homes, buildings, and appliances. In December of 2007, Congress did pass into law H.R. 6, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. This lawwill reduce our dependence on foreign oil and our energy costs. The legislation made it unlawful for any person to report false information on the wholesale price of gasoline or petroleum and required the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce and punish those found guilty of market manipulation. The law also established a single CAFE standard of 35 miles per gallon by the year 2020. There is one idea that I am unable to support, atemporary or permanent reduction in the gas tax. This proposal would have a significant negative impact on the nation's surface transportation programs, and would undermine our economic competitiveness and quality of life. The 18.3-cent per gallon gas tax was established in 1993. At that time, the average retail price of a gallon of gasoline was $1.05. Although the federal gas tax has not changed in the last 15 years, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has tripled to $3.39.It is clear that the gas tax is not the problem. Eliminating the gas tax won't solve the problem of high prices, but it will remove almost $3 billion per month from federal highway, highway safety, and transit infrastructure investments. Losing this money for infrastructure would eliminate approximately 300,000 family-wage, highway construction-related jobs. The result is cuts to critical highway safety funding, morecongestion on our highways, and a hit to our economy. The worst part of this proposal is it would allow oil companies to continue to line their pockets with windfall profits. The challenges to our nation's surface transportation network require serious, thoughtful solutions, not political sound bites. Finally, a number of people have asked me why prices in Oregon are higher than most other states. According to the General Accounting Office, the non-partisan investigative arm of Congress, gas prices are higher in Oregon than many other states due to four primary reasons: higher taxes, the ban on self-service stations, the rural nature of the state (which increases transportation costs), and the lack of refining capacity, which also boosts transportation costs since all the gas must be shipped from out of state. You can report incidents of suspected price gouging to the Department of Energy via the following website http://gaswatch.energy.gov or by calling 1-800-244-3301. You can also contact the Oregon Department of Justice to share your concerns. You can find information online here: http://www.doj.state.or.us/hot_topics/gasoline.shtml or call ORDOJ at 503-378-440. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts with me. Please keep in touch. Sincerely, Rep. Peter DeFazio Fourth District, OREGON | Gouging.....call and report the Gov. |
Why are we fighting for our lives?! 
