Kay Bailey Hutchison: “the bill before us is, pure and simple, a pathetic attempt to even call itself an energy plan. The American people are…”

“the bill before us is, pure and simple, a pathetic attempt to even call itself an energy plan. The American people are looking for leadership from the Congress. They are looking for something that will help small businesses not be eaten up with energy costs, the American family not be eaten up with the cost of gasoline at the pump, and what do they get in response? They get a bill that does not produce one ounce of energy. Not one ounce. This bill does three things: It enacts a windfall profits tax, it suggests that we sue OPEC, and it forms a commission to investigate price gouging. What the American people are looking for is lower gasoline prices at the pump and lower electricity costs in their small businesses. The Republican plan that was put forward so well by Senator Domenici, the ranking member of the Energy Committee, is a balanced plan that will produce results. What it does is what we have done in America for the last 200 years when we had a problem and that is use our ingenuity, use our natural resources, use our creativity, and come together to meet and beat our problems. That is what the Domenici plan does. We have passed legislation that gives incentives for renewable energy--wind energy and solar power--and those are great things. They are small, but they are great things. We wish to continue that. We wish to promote conservation, which we have done in past Energy bills. We wish to also expand nuclear power.”