Democratic leadership seizes on Warren's idea to fight price gouging by oil companies
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren has lots of plans for how Democrats can use the next 200 days before the election to fight for people. Congressional leadership is ready to take her up on one of them. Warren has advocated for legislation giving the Federal Trade Commission authority to investigate price gouging. Put the bill on the floor, she says, and “dare the Republicans to vote against it. A clean, simple bill.”
“Let’s put it to the Republicans. Do they care about price gouging from the perspective of helping the consumers? Or from the perspective of letting the big corporations continue to get away with it?” Democratic leadership indicated Thursday that they’re all for it.
“There’s no excuse for big oil companies to profiteer, to price gouge or exploit families,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. “Congress must do more to beef up the FTC’s ability to crack down on potential gas price manipulation and price gouging,” added Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Republicans will face a dilemma: Which side are they on?” Schumer said. “On the consumer and lowering gas prices? Or on the side of the big oil?”
Sen. Maria Cantrell (D-WA), who chairs the Commerce Committee, wants the FCT to have this power. She explained that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has authority to investigate and punish energy market manipulation—and has had for a few decades. That same regulatory power needs to exist for transportation rules, as well. “We need to make sure that there is a policeman on the beat,” Cantwell said. “It doesn’t seem right that we should have more transparency on a product like wheat or corn than we would on oil.’’
Draft legislation would create a unit within the FTC to monitor transportation fuel pricing and which would have the authority to levy fines and penalties. The idea in the draft is to double the maximum penalty for wholesale oil market manipulation to as much as $2 million/day for each violation.
While leadership didn’t say, moving forward with the bill will also force Joe Manchin to take a side, because his buddies in the industry are really unhappy with the idea. “Using the power of the FTC to undertake political investigations of American energy companies will not lower gas prices by a penny,″ Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, said of the proposal. “At a time of historic inflation and economic contraction, Americans deserve real policies that boost domestic oil and gas production,’’ she said.
Which is kind of a problem for them—why would they be protesting the idea so much if they weren’t right now engaged in price gouging? If they had nothing to worry about, why would they be worried about being investigated?
“Here’s the bottom line: They’re not using the money for domestic energy production,” Schumer said of the $77 billion in profits the big U.S. producers made last year. “They’re using it for stock buybacks. They’re using it to make their shares go up. We wouldn’t be here if the oil companies were using it to make the American consumer’s price cheaper.”
“Oil companies last year made record profits on these tragedies almost like vultures,” Schumer said. “We have the Ukraine tragedy. We have the COVID tragedy. And did they try to make things better? No, they come in and made record profits.”
“In this time of war and any time, there’s no excuse for big oil companies to pretend to profiteer, to price gouge or exploit families,” Pelosi added. “That is why Democrats are moving forward with forceful action that will stop and hold accountable oil and gas companies for profiteering and manipulating markets. This is a top priority for all of us.”
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