Political Quotes

“This bill is trying to deal with the rising prices of energy by addressing the very important issue of supply and demand. While I think there's nothing wrong with looking into the possibility of market manipulation, I do think this bill is trying to address another very important part of the price equation, and that is supply and demand. This issue has been studied, and it will continue to be studied. But I'll remind the gentlelady that we're dealing with an agency that has over $200 million already in its budget, and this amendment adding $128 million would be a significant increase in funding for FY12 for the CFTC budget. So I would urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment. If you would just look at what the CFTC has said, going back in 2008: The task force's preliminary assessment is that current oil prices and the increase in oil prices between January 2003 and June 2008 are largely due to fundamental supply and demand factors. In 2009: We find little evidence that hedge funds and other noncommercial (speculator) position changes cause price changes; the results instead suggest that price changes do precede their position changes. So we can go on and on about what the CFTC has already said, but this bill deals with the issue of supply and demand. With that, I would yield 2 minutes to a great leader from the State of Texas (Mr. Conaway) who has done tremendous work on this issue over at the CFTC and in commodity issues.”