Ed Perlmutter: “Every other Saturday I have a ``government at the grocery.'' I visit different grocery stores throughout my district.…”

“Every other Saturday I have a ``government at the grocery.'' I visit different grocery stores throughout my district. This past week I was at a grocery store in Edgewater, Colorado, and the number one topic was the price of gas. Usually it has been Iraq, and we certainly are going to talk about Iraq tonight, but the number one conversation was about the price of gas. And people were saying, look, we understand that on a per-barrel basis, it's down, the cost is down, the price is down. Why is the cost at the pump up? And, you know, we have excuses. The excuses this time, Mr. Klein, have been, well, we just needed to clean the refineries. They clean the refineries right at the beginning of the summer travel season because by restricting the supply, you drive up the price, and we can't have that anymore. We can't have our people being gouged in this country by manipulation of the market in that fashion. What we are seeing is too few companies controlling too critical an item, a commodity, like gasoline, and that is what that price gouging bill was all about today.”