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Energy prices seem to be coming down a little bit, but I find that somewhat ironic that when you begin talking about having an excess profits rebate to people, and you get people like the majority leader of the United States Senate, and Senator Judd Gregg, a conservative senator from New Hampshire, start talking about profits along with the rest of us who’ve raised these issues for weeks, then all of a sudden, the industry finds a way to bring their prices down.

I never saw any justifications for them raising their prices in the first place, but obviously it looks like they’re bringing them down because they’re afraid Congress may do something to actually get some control over how these industries charge prices to consumers.

Senator Byron Dorgan and I have legislation that would put an excess profits rebate on the price of a barrel of gasoline in excess of $40. While we’re watching prices come down on gasoline we know that in the case of home heating oil, consumers in Connecticut could expect to pay an additional $1600 this winter. That will be up almost $400 from last year’s prices. It may not sound like much, but if you’re a family on a fixed income or a retired or elderly person, that $400 extra this winter could really be a tremendous bite into your income.

So we’re going to do everything we can to try and break through and get some controls and get the industry to pay more attention to consumer needs. I feel really strongly about this. While I don’t begrudge these companies making profits, and if they’re going to plough back these profits into energy exploration, into development of alternatives, then fine—they can keep their profits. But when you’re making $9 billion in profits in a quarter, (that’s more than anything that’s ever been earned by any corporation in the history of our country), then there’s some price gouging going on. They may not like the work, but that’s what I call it—it’s gouging. There was no justification economically for these increases. Ripping off people as they have in my view is unconscionable, particularly when you consider the loss of jobs, the slowdown of our economy, all being impacted by rising energy prices.

So we’re going to do what we can here to carry our message through. We hope that prices continue to come down, but I’m not going to sit around and wait for them to go up again to try and establish some principles that would at least give people some relief, when these industries decide they’re going to make these excess profits that they did over the last several months.