Lois Capps: “There are many times when we come to this floor and engage in heated debate, and we've heard some heated debate on this…”

“There are many times when we come to this floor and engage in heated debate, and we've heard some heated debate on this bill. But my final amendment offers us the opportunity to come together to do something extraordinarily important, and that is to ensure our constituents' hard-earned cash is redirected away from the gas pump and back into their wallets. I want to be clear, the passage of this amendment will not prevent the passage of the underlying bill. If it's adopted, my amendment will be incorporated into the bill and the bill will be immediately voted upon. Now I make no apologies for opposing this bill. Regardless of how you feel about the bill, my amendment should be something we could all agree on. My amendment preserves new fuel efficiency standards issued last month if their repeal would mean higher prices at the pump for our constituents or lost jobs for our workers. These new standards raise fuel efficiency to 54.5 miles per gallon. That's roughly twice the mileage our cars are getting today. By 2025, these standards will save consumers $1.7 trillion at the gas pump, and they will cut our oil imports by 2 million barrels per day. That's one half our current imports for OPEC. They also represent a new chapter for American ingenuity. Mr. Speaker, if U.S. engineers made it possible for every car to include a computer more powerful than the one that sent a man to the Moon, then surely they can produce cars that go further on a gallon of gas.…”