Jeff Bingaman: “I want to summarize where we are on the comprehensive energy legislation issue that all of us are interested in moving…”

“I want to summarize where we are on the comprehensive energy legislation issue that all of us are interested in moving ahead, and to tell you my perspective on it at this point. As we began the year, we identified two sets of issues. There were the short-term challenges we faced as a country, and then there were the more long-term issues. The short-term challenges included the very high prices for electricity in California, which I think all of us recognized at that time were not just unreasonable but were exorbitant really for many residents in California. Really, the wholesale prices, being very high, were not being passed on to consumers at that time, although the consumer retail prices started to reflect those high prices that had been charged for such a long time. Second, of course, natural gas prices were very high. That was a concern. A third short-term concern was the inadequacy of funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. That is the program Congress put in place many years ago to help low-income families in this country pay their utility bills. The demand on that program was so great during this last winter, and even into this spring and early summer, that most States that operate that program, and are dependent on Federal funds to do so, were out of funding. So that was another short-term problem we needed to address. Fortunately, most of these short-term issues have been addressed in some significant way.”