Political Quotes

“I rise to speak this afternoon about the escalating cost of gasoline at the pump--something that affects every American consumer. Crude oil prices are now more than $100 a barrel and the price of gasoline at the pump for our consumers is about $4 on average across the Nation. It is even more here in the District. Despite some correction recently in the oil commodity markets, the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects that prices this summer will average $1 more than they did just a year ago. Gasoline price spikes are a form of stealth inflation eating away at the income of American families, impacting our economic growth, and deepening the hardship to the almost 14 million people we have still looking for work. Some economic analysts indicate that for each $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil, it has the impact of reducing our economic growth by about two-tenths of 1 percent. Each two-tenths of 1 percent equates to 120,000 fewer jobs that are created just in the first year of that type of increase. So you can see it has a very significant cumulative impact. Imported oil also greatly affects detrimentally our balance of trade. Last year alone that contributed to a $265 billion trade imbalance for our Nation. The high price of oil, whether it is at the wellhead or the price of gasoline at the pump, impacts every sector of our economy.…”