Rob Bishop: “I appreciate the gentleman from New Mexico's introduction, which is far more fluent than my presentation will be. I…”

“I appreciate the gentleman from New Mexico's introduction, which is far more fluent than my presentation will be. I share what the gentleman from New Mexico, as well as the gentlelady from Wyoming, have said on this particular issue, that we in the West seem to have a unique situation in which there is an effort to try and stifle--hopefully by simple incompetence and not out of planning--but stifle the economic growth that we need so desperately in the West for our kids and for our future. There are two things that were said today that I read in the paper that come from this administration, which tells us that we're obviously in a campaign season and that the words are simply being used in a unique and different way. The President once said that the party to which I belong is currently engaged in a war on the poor, which I find unique because, to be honest, when you have overriding and ever-increasing energy costs, that--as the gentlelady from Wyoming said--is the real war on the poor. Somebody who is in the bottom portion of our economic sphere, our economic stratus, will pay three times as high a percentage of their income for increased energy prices as those who are in the top will. If you have a nice urban job, you may have an inconvenience as energy prices go up. But if you're one of those struggling working families trying to make ends meet, this becomes a unique situation.…”