Joe Cunningham: “let me give a little history. Price caps in the 1970s were disastrous. Canada controls a large percentage of the energy…”

“let me give a little history. Price caps in the 1970s were disastrous. Canada controls a large percentage of the energy coming into California. If we put price caps on, there is nothing that controls Canada in resources for selling power. That is why we ended up with gas lines in the 1970s. My colleagues, look at what Governor Davis has done to stop power generation, yet he is now trying to shift the blame to the White House. The Governor was warned that deregulation and not buying long-term power would be critical to California. He not only rejected it, he killed it. And at the same time the Governor now has millions of dollars from those same energy companies in his personal campaign. I think that is wrong. The Governor was warned that San Diego Gas & Electric was a private company and they had to buy excess power from public utilities, but they could not because there was no excess power. He rejected it. The White House offered the California Governor the GE and Caterpillar generators that could produce thousands of megawatts of power. I quote, ``We do not need it.'' The White House offered the Governor help, and each time he rejected it. The White House said if you make a request in writing, we will do a waiver of the California Clean Air standards just for this emergency period. The Governor would not do that. A year and a half later, he is now thinking about it.”