Ralph Hall: “I have just heard Mr. Dingell mention World War II and Pearl Harbor and I heard Mr. Pearce answer him; and they are both…”

“I have just heard Mr. Dingell mention World War II and Pearl Harbor and I heard Mr. Pearce answer him; and they are both correct in what they said, that that was an energy war. I remember like yesterday, I was 17 years old standing on the banks of the Tombigbee River in Alabama, and a guy ran down and said the Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor. I didn't know where Pearl Harbor was. I said, we had better hitchhike back to Dallas; those Japanese will go straight to Washington. I thought Pearl Harbor was down around Mobile somewhere. That is how ignorant I was about the Nation at that time, but I am a little smarter now. And I remember well that Cordell Hull and Henry Stimson cut the energy off from Japan. They had 13 months' national existence. They had to break out and go somewhere, and we had to know they were going to. That was an energy war. So I am a little disappointed in the majority. During the campaign, they blamed the Republicans for high energy prices. Here, before us today, is a bill that the Democrats are touting as the end to high energy prices. There is one big obvious problem with the bill: there is nothing in this bill that will bring any relief to the citizens of our great country or that will lower the cost of a tank of gasoline or the monthly electricity bills. It will likely in fact have the opposite effect.”