WALLY HERGER: “Every time I visit with constituents, like most of you here in Congress, I hear about high gas prices. And they're…”

“Every time I visit with constituents, like most of you here in Congress, I hear about high gas prices. And they're right. Gas prices are too high. Prices in our free market are governed by supply and demand. Record high prices result from, among other things, the fact that we don't produce enough of our own supply domestically and are therefore at the mercy of unpredictable and often unstable foreign producers. Thirty years ago, when we had our first oil crisis, we were dependent on foreign sources of oil for only about one-third of our supplies. Today it is roughly two-thirds of our supply. A sure way to fix this situation is to encourage environmentally safe oil exploration and production here in the United States. But this is the opposite of what today's legislation seeks. In fact, today's bill proposes to raise taxes on domestic oil and gas exploration by nearly $12 billion. This discourages investment in U.S. supplies and will, over time, increase our dependence even more on foreign sources of fossil fuels. Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to vote against higher gas prices and against H.R. 2776, this ill-conceived energy legislation.”