Bob Filner: “I wish the majority party, the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on…”

“I wish the majority party, the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, would say we need to get out a bill to help California and the West before Memorial Day. Why are we rushing on this before Memorial Day when California is being bled dry? The gentleman from California (Chairman Thomas) knows what is going on in California. We are paying as a State now $3 million an hour for electricity. We are paying $70 million, sometimes $90 million a day, over $3 billion a month. No State, even if it is the sixth biggest economy in the world, can survive that kind of bleeding. Mr. Speaker, 65 percent of the business in San Diego County by a report that came out by the Chamber of Commerce, 65 percent of the small businesses in San Diego County are facing bankruptcy this year because of energy. They cannot survive given the costs of electricity. We have social service organizations for our children who we are not going to leave behind after the last vote closing up half the time because of the overhead in electricity. We have schools who cannot teach because of the overhead in electricity. We have libraries that cannot buy books because of the overhead in electricity. We are bleeding in California and in Oregon and in Washington and in New Mexico and Wyoming and Montana.”