House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will hold a vote on H.R. 7688 in the U.S. House of Representatives this week in an attempt to tackle skyrocketing gas prices.
If passed by Congress and signed into law, H.R. 7688 would give President Biden the authority to declare an “energy emergency proclamation.” This proclamation would make it illegal for consumer fuel to be sold at “unconscionably excessive” prices or at a price that “indicates the seller is exploiting the circumstances related to an energy emergency.”
House Rep. Kim Schrier (D-WA), who originally introduced the bill with House Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), commented in support of the bill, “Congress needs to be doing all it can to bring down costs for American families. What’s infuriating is that this is happening at the same time that gas and oil companies are making record profits and taking advantage of international crises to make a profit. This must stop.”
For her part, House Rep. Porter, Chair of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight, stated, “Oil companies are not struggling — they continue to announce record profits and tens of billions of dollars’ worth of stock buybacks — but families are.”
This legislative action follows a recent study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute that concluded more than half of the last year’s price increases were driven by increased corporate profit margins.
Brent Bennett, policy director for Life:Powered at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told The Dallas Express that the solution was not in price controls.
“Global energy markets are highly liquid and competitive, and OPEC is the only entity large enough to have any effect on commodity prices,” said Bennett. “This is just another example of the Biden Administration’s ‘Empower OPEC’ energy plan that punishes American producers and raises energy costs for American consumers.”
Speaker Pelosi and her Democratic majority in the House will likely pass the legislation, but the fate of H.R. 7688 is unclear in the U.S. Senate.
Dan Eberhart, CEO of the Colorado-based oil drilling company Canary, responded to Democrats’ efforts in Forbes, saying:
“The only thing that will alleviate the situation is higher investment in global crude and fuel supplies. Biden knows this, which is why he recently did an about-face on the issue and called for more domestic drilling. But the president and his party’s energy and climate policies are still working against the development of new fossil fuel supplies, and they’ve done nothing to resolve the lack of refining capacity.”
Bennett echoed that sentiment and added, “The political class in D.C. needs to listen to the industry instead of demonizing it and stop the reckless government spending and monetary policy that is the real reason energy prices are so high right now.”
House Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), an opponent of H.R. 7688, challenged the notion that price gouging was even happening, calling such claims “ridiculous.”
