The entire country is struggling to cope with the record high prices at the pump while energy executives enjoy record-high profits. At a time when the price of oil reaches new highs every week, Congress has an obligation to ensure that our energy markets are free from the possibility of tampering and manipulation that costs Americans in their excessive energy bills.

Our provision will not solve America’s entire energy calamity. Indeed, this Congress must use our current energy state as a challenge and bridge the political differences to invest in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and pass long-term extensions of tax credits that are actually set to expire at the end of this year. But this provision will provide authority for the CFTC to ensure that our prices are not being manipulated by the futures markets and those prices are truly reflective of supply and demand. This is an essential step forward in improving America’s faith in our energy markets, and I hope that my colleagues can use our bipartisan work on this issue as a template as we tackle the energy crisis today in America.

I condemn the Democrats’ massive farm bill, which would increase our nation’s food costs. Americans are already having trouble making ends meet, gas prices are rising to unaffordable levels, and food costs are off the charts.

Right now, Congress has the historic opportunity to lower these prices before they continue to get worse. Instead, the Democrats bring to the floor a bill that only makes the issue worse. Why are we forcing our nation’s hard working taxpayers to pay more to put food on their table?

I urge Congress to reject the farm bill.  We have the time, the opportunity, and the duty to write a bill that is better — one that will actually lower, not raise, food prices in the U.S. and the across the globe.

Our country needs a strong, sensible long-term energy policy that can reduce our use of fossil fuels and cut our dependence on foreign oil. Last year, as part of the 2007 Energy Bill, we adopted the first increase in vehicle fuel-economy standards since the 1970s. That will raise average fuel efficiency by 40 percent, which can save the average family $1,000 in fuel costs annually.

We also need to boost investment in cutting-edge conservation technology, such as hybrid electric vehicles and the next generation of clean, renewable energy. Just this week, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a report saying it’s feasible for our country to obtain 20 percent of its electricity from wind power by 2030.

But we must also bring consumers immediate relief from high energy costs, which is why I cosponsored Tuesday’s amendment to suspend oil purchases for the government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Our country needs the reserve for emergencies, but there is no reason to be taking oil off the market at a time of record prices. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, my colleagues in the House of Representatives and I passed the most comprehensive response yet to the ongoing mortgage crisis. The American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act (H.R. 3221) responds directly to the crisis currently faced by middle-class Americans and provides financial authorities and the federal government the tools to prevent such a meltdown in the future.

U.S. families are expected to lose more than $2.6 trillion in housing wealth between 2007 and 2009. As home prices continue to fall, homeowners’ debt on their houses has exceeded the equity in their homes for the first time since 1945. I have heard from hundreds of constituents – many of whom are credit-worthy but cannot refinance – who are agonizing over this housing crisis. It is estimated that over 7,000 homeowners are losing their homes daily and an additional 40 million neighboring homeowners could see their property values decline as wealth is destroyed throughout entire communities. Read the rest of this entry »

Once again, the aviation industry has reached a pivotal turning point. Unquestionably, fuel costs are punishing all our domestic carriers — in fact, they are quite likely the primary impetus behind the recent announcement of merger negotiations between Delta and Northwest. These costs are depressing a segment of the economy that should be taking off. Passenger enplanements are up, yet forecasts for profits are down. And those profits are projected to decline into the future, despite the continuing increase in passenger traffic. The International Air Traffic Association, an association representing nearly all airlines participating in international air travel, has readjusted its growth estimates from previous industry profits of $7.8 billion in 2008 to a more recent figure of $5 billion — an overall decline of more than one-third! Perhaps most menacing is the potential wave of consolidation that lurks around the corner — the end result of which could be a reduction in the numbers of our legacy airlines and a simultaneous decline in service and choice for the flying public.

Undoubtedly, the challenges posed by unprecedented high costs of aviation fuel are as troubling as they are systemic. In the past month, five commercial carriers have filed for bankruptcy, and exorbitant fuel costs have shattered the bottom line of more than one major airline. Delta and Northwest recently reported losses in the first quarter of 2008 totaling $10.5 billion — almost exclusively due to fuel costs! Some estimates reported the overall cost of fuel this year to be more than 30 percent of operating costs for airlines or $150 billion for the industry — for a 44 percent increase over last year’s fuel bill.

I arrived here in Congress on the eve of the deregulation of the airlines; since that time, I believe the results of that decision have been a mixed bag at best. Read the rest of this entry »

With Congress and President Bush entering negotiations over the next tranche of war funding, via an emergency supplemental appropriations bill, now is a good time for a little emergency check.

As the lead editorial in today’s Washington Post, Not an Emergency, points out, “[f]ive years into paying for two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s outrageous that so much of the financing continues to be approved outside the normal budget process, through ‘emergency’ spending bills that must be passed, must be passed in a hurry…”

So, five years to the month after “mission accomplished,” after half a trillion dollars in war spending through supplementals, maybe it’s time to focus attention on a budget reform proposal that has been circulating in Washington for, well, at least five years. It seeks to end a practice, which, as we have said “obscures or distorts important aspects of the fiscal impact of federal spending and, therefore, undermines the general fiscal responsibility of the federal government.” Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Cusack, managing editor of The Hill, takes a look at the week ahead on Capitol Hill.

Most of the reasons offered up by President Bush and congressional opponents of the housing crisis plan sponsored by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) have a yellow, off-tone ring to them. You hear that it’s a bailout, that it rewards the miscreants who bamboozled homeowners into predatory loans, that it tosses the burden of foreclosure risk onto innocent taxpayers, that the administration has already tried it, that it is already working, that it won’t work, that it will work and cost us — enough reasons to suggest that unreasoned ideological skivvies are at play.

All well and good. But while President Bush has the luxury of ideology — his name will never be on a ballot again — this is not true of his GOP colleagues in the House and Senate, where election-year concessions to reality regarding the survival of the realty market (see this must-read story in Friday’s NY Times) and of members of Congress themselves trump adherence to a stubborn, shop-worn, incoherent set of empty shibboleths. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve heard from so many constituents impacted by foreclosures, declining home values and tough economic times.  This legislation strikes a balance between free enterprise and regulation, which is what needs to happen for our system to work. I am proud to back this legislation to help homeowners stay in their homes and keep making payments, which will help ease the credit crisis faced by our markets.

The housing crisis is impacting all of us. Families who lose their homes are directly impacted, but their former neighbors have also seen their homes lose value. Our comprehensive approach will help end this crisis and get our economy back on track.

I have not introduced a gas tax increase and I do not plan to do so.  My comments about the gas tax this week were made during a Transportation and Infrastructure hearing and were part of a discussion about Congressional inaction on our nation’s energy supply emergency.  Congressional hearings like these allow Members an open forum to discuss issues.

Right now, Congress under Democratic Leadership is paralyzed.  Under Republican Leadership I passed ANWR in 1995 but it was vetoed by President Clinton.  This week, ANWR was voted down by Democrats in the Natural Resources Committee.  Congress is passing annual moratoria on producing energy from the outer continental shelf.  Congress refuses to amend flawed environmental laws that make it easy for radical environmentalists to tie up development.  Environmental groups are suing to stop leasing in the Beaufort Sea . . . the Chukchi Sea . . . the Rocky Mountain Front.  The U.S. has more than two trillion barrels of oil in shale, more than Saudi Arabia’s total oil reserves, yet our government doesn’t have a fully operational oil shale leasing program.  Faced with today’s energy supply emergency, this is a shame. Read the rest of this entry »