Bob Filner

I have say to the President, hello. We in California and the rest of the Nation are still facing an energy crisis. Fifty-five percent of the small businesses in my community of San Diego face bankruptcy this year because of the high…

we all love, cherish and respect our flag. Our flag is a symbol of our great nation, a symbol of our fundamental values of freedom, liberty, justice and opportunity. And it is those values we must protect. I stand today with Jim Warner, a…

Now, what happened as the gentleman just pointed out with Duke and with all the others, they are no exception, is that they no longer had under deregulation a duty to serve their customers. Their only duty is to serve their stockholders…

Some of our colleagues do watch us as we make these statements and talk about the situation in the West, and they say stop your whining. It is your own damn fault. If you did not have these environmental whackos in California and Oregon…

But I would like to also underline what the gentleman just said both manipulation of the market to increase the prices and also the incredible suffering in California and the West. Not only does that market control give them the ability to…

When I hear those figures, I wonder how these people sleep at night. I can again look at my own district where we have been experiencing these problems now for a year. We have scores of small businesspeople just had to close up. I mean, we…

here we are, a year after the electricity crisis hit California and the West. The crisis and suffering continues. And where is the President? Not one item in his energy plan addresses the crisis in the West. And where is FERC, the Federal…

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…

Evidence continues to mount that California and the west coast electricity market has been illegally manipulated, and consumers are entitled to billions of dollars for illegal overcharges since last summer. Last week in sworn testimony to…

I understand the technical point of order, but my constituents do not understand how a technicality can prevent dealing with this emergency in San Diego and in California. The chairman knows, and I will not bother to ask, but the chairman…

as we speak, the Republicans are celebrating over at the White House their big tax break plan. These same folks who are celebrating gave great speeches on Memorial Day last week saying how much they supported our veterans. Yet they voted…

We are supposed to have 20,000 megawatt surplus. Well, somehow all of the plants at once were shut down. They had maintenance problems or other problems. Or, and this is why I say it is a price problem, not just a supply problem, they…

I would say to those industries that really their survival is at stake, and yet they see a Republican President, and they may be Republicans, they feel they should not get into this. I will say to the businesses of California and the West…

I just want to show this chart, which shows the coalition of organizations and individuals which support that concept in the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which is called the Price Gouging and Black-out Prevention Amendment. We can see…

I want to have the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) show through this chart that the crisis now that we are experiencing with the price is not primarily one of supply. We have supply. I would ask the gentleman from California (Mr…

I will tell the gentlemen, by the way, that because the situation in San Diego has become so grave with doubling and tripling of rates, with scores of businesses facing bankruptcy and closing their doors, the whole community is virtually…

The President visited our city last week. We are in the middle of a crisis. As I said earlier, if it was a tornado or earthquake, he would have been there. He chose not even to come to meet people or the press. He went to one of our great…

There is a power plant in my district in southern San Diego County, the biggest power plant in my area, and in January during a stage-3 emergency that we had, stage-3 alerts, the biggest generator of their four at this plant, a…

There is a myth that our colleague, the gentleman from California, the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means said earlier today in a debate, California inflicted this upon ourself. Our environmental wackos overregulated and prevented…

California is being bled dry by a cartel of energy wholesalers. We are being charged at a rate of $3 billion a month, and the State is purchasing that because the utilities are bankrupt. Our first job is to get down those prices. We have…

And, the blackouts occurred at a time when our capacity for production theoretically is 45,000 megawatts, the demand in the wintertime when air-conditioning is not on is about 30,000, so we have a 30,000 megawatt demand, we have a 45,000…

Exactly. Not only were they making profits, I had thousands of people at plants in San Diego being sent home because their places of employment were blacked out or they had certain agreements with the utilities that they had to turn down…

The GOP majority, GOP, gas oil and pollution, is going to make sure that when we leave for our recess we have passed a tax bill 40 to 45 percent of which goes to the wealthiest 1 percent of our population. The people who live in my…

I, like you, find it just inexplicable that we are going to be leaving for our Memorial Day recess and this majority refuses to act on this crisis.

This is the irony of the situation and the answer to our critics when we say we need what is called cost-based rates, established by the Federal Government, to get these prices under control. Cost-based rates means the generator of…