Jay Inslee: “The reason we need to respond is the administration has not. Beginning in 2000 and 2001, we have made every concerted…”

“The reason we need to respond is the administration has not. Beginning in 2000 and 2001, we have made every concerted effort to get the administration to impose some type of relief, price caps or otherwise. They refuse to take any steps. They sat on their hands. As Bonnie and Clyde ran out with the bank notes, these people sat there and watched this theft occur and did not lift a finger for 2 years. Now in 2003, because they were so ashamed by what was going on, they finally issued some price caps. But unfortunately according to their commissioner, and this was on June 4, and this is amazing, talk about a catch-22 here, this administration's agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, whose job it is to protect consumers, they wrote me a letter. I urged them to take action to get refunds for people up and down the west coast. They wrote me a letter and told me, number one, we have concluded there was massive violation of the law by Enron. We have concluded that there was manipulation. We have concluded there was gaming of the system. We have concluded in essence that there was congestion caused to shut down access to drive the price. We have concluded there was all of this skullduggery and scandal. But we do not think we have the authority to act to get refunds back from the people who had all of this money embezzled before 2003. So here we have this administration saying we concluded there was a huge crime here.”