Bill Pascrell: “a recent General Accounting Office investigation in 2004, which I am holding in my hand, concluded that gasoline…”

“a recent General Accounting Office investigation in 2004, which I am holding in my hand, concluded that gasoline refineries have intentionally limited their capacity to keep gasoline prices high and their profits up. You did not write this. I did not write this. This is the General Accounting Office. For the consumers, these higher energy costs are a disaster for their pocketbooks and further stagnates our economy. Now there is a difference here between what your side approaching the problem will do and what our side will do. Question, who is going in the right direction? We have heard that a lot lately. Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said that we are a 21st- century superpower with a third-world transmission grid. Remember that debate a few years ago on utilities and electricity and who got blamed for it? And then we finally discovered that the industry itself was fooling the market and manipulating the market, and those characters are on trial right now. A 21st-century superpower with a third-world refinery infrastructure, and that is what we have come to. This refinery legislation, which I will vote against, which is before us right now is an effort to solidify our dependence on fossil fuel. On one side of our mouth, we are saying we are addicted to oil. On the other side of our mouth, we are saying let us build more refineries, make it easier for more refineries to be built so that we can produce gasoline.…”