09/10/08 What is Congress Doing about Gas Prices?

What is Congress Doing about Gas Prices? I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Congress is back in session and I'm sure that most of the members got a major earful as they visited their home constituents. According to Washington Congressman, Doc Hastings, all the while the recess was going on; some members kept pushing for changes. HASTINGS: A number of my Republican colleagues now numbering some 135 had a meeting on the House floor every day in August rather than taking a vacation to try to send a message to the Speaker that we ought to be at least given an opportunity to vote on diversifying our energy portfolio. Of course the Republicans have been pushing for more oil exploration while the Democrats have been holding up that move. HASTINGS: Up to this point, the Speaker has denied a vote on drilling whether it's in Alaska, offshore or any place within the United States. She's also denied opportunities to vote on other issues like nuclear power and others. We collectively, the 135 that have been on the floor feel that is unbecoming of the way the U.S. House of Representatives should be run. We should have an open debate and let the votes fall where they may. During the recess Hastings had a very ambitious travel agenda and one of the main items that he took time to work on was hydropower. HASTINGS: We are very lucky in the northwest because we have a majority of our power come from hydropower. I think we should look at ways to expand that. There's more capacity in some of our dams. We can increase our capacity simply by improving the turbines. We need to do that to continue to grow our energy supply but ought to look at nuclear which is an environmentally clean source of power. Hastings has introduced legislation to look into these kinds of energy sources. HASTINGS: Within the all of the above and all the above means hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, drilling offshore as comprehensive as we possibly can and that's what we hope to have an opportunity to vote on that bill on the House but to this point we have been denied that opportunity by Speaker Pelosi. It's new legislation that was introduced in late July but there are a number of individual bills that have been hanging around for a couple of years that we simply haven't had an opportunity to vote on. It is doubtful that any kind of meaningful legislation will be acted on before the election coming up in only 2 months. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.