Jon Tester: “I rise today to call for action by the Senate on an urgent problem facing this country, facing the State of Montana: gas…”

“I rise today to call for action by the Senate on an urgent problem facing this country, facing the State of Montana: gas prices. The national average now, we just found out last weekend, is $4 a gallon. I remember when gas was $1.46. It was not that long ago. It was before the Bush administration took over. That was before the war in Iraq, before speculators and market manipulators spiraled out of control, before that $17 billion Bush tax cut for our Nation's biggest oil companies. These gas prices hurt. They especially hurt hard-working people in Montana and across rural America. In my State, nearly everybody has to drive to work. There are not other options. We do not have a subway system. We do not have other means of mass transit. Whether it is on a tractor or behind the wheel of a truck, a lot of folks rely on horsepower and the fuel to supply that horsepower to get their work done. Of course, high gas prices means high prices for consumer goods. It means fewer jobs. Middle-class families are getting pinched hard by these high gas prices. For low-income folks, high gas prices are unbearable. They do not need to see headlines like in Newsweek this week to know our economy is in trouble. People are already feeling it. Yet we have seen no solutions from this administration.”