Byron Dorgan: “It seems to me this electricity title is critically important. I chaired the hearings that dealt with the Enron abuses…”

“It seems to me this electricity title is critically important. I chaired the hearings that dealt with the Enron abuses and other abuses in California and the west coast when I was chairing a subcommittee of the Commerce Committee. What happened there was egregious. It was wholesale stealing, and I use the word ``stealing'' in a very direct way. There are massive criminal investigations underway. We have heard the terms Get Shorty, Fat Boy, Death Star--the schemes we unearthed. The people, in memoranda inside the company, were saying: Here is the way we are going to cheat consumers. They created congestion, and they then got paid for removing the congestion that they created. They actually deliberately cheated consumers, not to the tune of a couple of loaves of bread but to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. It seems to me, as this energy title is written, there is not one person in the Senate--not one--who would stand up and say: It is fine for consumers to be confronted with that sort of manipulation and cheating or criminal behavior.”