Political Quotes

“I came to the floor at the beginning of this week to make a simple point: as oil prices have reached $139 per barrel in recent days, the truth is that no one--not the oil industry, not the futures exchanges, not the regulators, not even this United States Senator--knows exactly what's going on here. But with the economy in a tailspin and with the average price for a gallon of gas surpassing $4 and even higher across the country, it is time to find out. The chairman of the chief regulator of the futures markets, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, doesn't seem to know either. In a recent appropriations subcommittee hearing I chaired, Chairman Lukken stated that ``CFTC staff analysis indicates that the current higher futures prices are generally not a result of manipulative forces.'' Yet last Thursday and Friday the futures price of a barrel of oil shot up $16. In 2 days. Unless there was a massive pipeline explosion late last week that I somehow missed, there is simply no supply or demand justification for that kind of price increase. Something more is going on here.”