William Tauzin: “I wanted to quickly address a subject in support of this rule that has arisen on the floor regarding California. Our…”

“I wanted to quickly address a subject in support of this rule that has arisen on the floor regarding California. Our committee, led by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), did a marvelous job of producing a set of solutions that could help the California problem out that included both demand reduction and supply increases, getting the QS back on, getting the Governor and the President to make some administrative decisions that have helped California, I think, a great deal. One of the recommendations we made in that bill and passed on to the FERC was the recommendations to do price mitigation on a 24-hour basis 7 days a week. Unanimously, Democrats and Republicans have now endorsed that proposal. It is now the order of the FERC. Senator Feinstein has said with this order in place she is not even asking for the price control bill that she originally sponsored on the Senate side. This notion of putting price controls into this debate is absolutely ludicrous. The reason California got in trouble was because California had price caps at the retail level, and attempted price caps at the wholesale level. Those price caps did something very remarkable. Those price caps reduced conservation in California by 8 percent, encouraged excessive demand, a 6 percent growth, the highest in the Nation, and put California in a shortage position where it did not have enough power plants to supply the needs of that economy.”