Barbara Boxer: “That is the key. The fact is, in our States--I will just talk to my State--the only agency we had to protect us was…”

“That is the key. The fact is, in our States--I will just talk to my State--the only agency we had to protect us was FERC. FERC, under the Clinton administration, found that the prices were unjust and unreasonable. Then there was a switch in administrations and they never repealed that. They admitted they were unjust and unreasonable, but they did absolutely nothing to help us--for 1 year. We were talking about billions of dollars of costs. The long-term contracts were signed under duress by our Governor because the spot market was so impossible he tried to get some of the demand away from the spot market, went into these long-term contracts. Fortunately, he has begun to renegotiate those. We have asked FERC to help us renegotiate most of them. It is stunning to me that this underlying bill gives so much more power to FERC when under the law as it existed they did nothing to help our people for 1 year. They finally put in place the market-based pricing and, by the way, it cured our problem. After this administration saying for a year that it would not cure our problem, it cured our problem. Those market-based prices are set to expire in September, and already the new Chairman of FERC has hinted that he is not going to reimpose those price caps.”