Bob Filner: “the electricity crisis continues 1 year later in San Diego, in California and the West. Scores of businesses in my…”

“the electricity crisis continues 1 year later in San Diego, in California and the West. Scores of businesses in my hometown of San Diego have gone out of business. People on fixed incomes are suffering because they have to make choices between buying food and prescription drugs and air conditioning. This should not be happening in America. Now, we have called for price controls, we have called for a refund of the overcharges, and people from my State on the other side of the aisle have said, Let the free market work. Price controls don't work. I say to my colleagues, there is no free market. The system is completely out of whack. There is an energy cartel which dominates our lives in California. I want to give you a specific example, Mr. Speaker, of how the market in California is being manipulated by this energy cartel and what we in San Diego hope to do about it. There is a 700 megawatt power plant in my district. We call it the South Bay Power Plant. It is operated by the Duke Energy Corporation. It looks like in the last year, Mr. Speaker, Duke Energy has made close to $800 million off that plant while 65 percent of the businesses in our area face bankruptcy.”