Wendy Sherman: “In the City of Los Angeles, and I live within the city limits, the prices are the same, no blackouts; we have no…”

“In the City of Los Angeles, and I live within the city limits, the prices are the same, no blackouts; we have no problems. Our city produces a little bit more electricity than it needs and sells it to the gentleman's city and others in the west. Occasionally, somebody will say, maybe L.A. is charging San Diego too much or too little, and somebody will write a story about it on page 6 of the newspaper. But the overwhelming story, the headline story is, no story here. Mr. Speaker, regulated electricity, that is to say privately owned but subject to rate regulation, costs plus profit, worked fine in our State and virtually every other State for 80 to 100 years. Something even more regulated, that is to say the government actually owning the means of production and selling the electricity itself, works fine in Sacramento, the City of Los Angeles, the City of Burbank. Unregulated power seems to work well in some of the States where their economy is not growing at all and their population relative to the rest of the country is contracting. But in a State like ours that is growing a bit, surrounded by other States that are also experiencing growth, an unregulated market is an invitation to be gouged. The theorists may not have realized that at the time. It seems apparent now. When we try something and it does not work, we should go back to what we had before that was working pretty well.”