Ralph Lee Abraham: “I rise to talk with respect to one of the amendments on that list of 113, one that I had planned to offer, which would…”

“I rise to talk with respect to one of the amendments on that list of 113, one that I had planned to offer, which would basically be an amendment that embodies a bill I introduced, S. 2808, the purpose of which was to temporarily suspend the Federal gasoline tax for 150 days, while holding harmless the highway trust fund and protecting the Social Security trust fund. Obviously, this is not the type of legislation that would normally be brought on an appropriations bill. I have traveled throughout the State of Michigan in recent weeks where we are confronting gasoline prices that are so high that the motorists in our State and people in industries that depend on the purchase of gasoline and other fuels are up in arms at a level I don't believe I can ever remember. Whether you are in the Abraham family, which owns a minivan and pays $50 to fill up the tank, or whether you are a family that has multiple minivans and fills up more than one tank a week, or whether you are a farmer who has many needs in the production of agricultural commodities for the use of motor vehicles and other machines that require oil and fuel, or whether you are in the automotive industry that depends on the purchase of SUVs, light trucks, and other American-made automobiles and motor vehicles, or whether it is the tourism industry that requires reasonably priced gasoline in order to make sure that summer vacation plans are carried out--”