Another Baron Lie: “Go After the Speculators”

Under heavy fire for promising in his 2006 election bid to lower gas prices and failing to deliver, Baron Hill has made much of the menace of “speculators.”

“Speculators,” Baron says, are largely responsible for the price of gasoline. Without them, he says, gasoline would cost $2.75.

Now, when Baron was running in 2006, gasoline cost $2.16 a gallon. Why Baron would think that amount was too high then, but that $2.75 would be okay now, is a mystery to me.

But I digress. Baron Hill obviously thinks that speculators are a major cause for the high price of gasoline.

He said as much again during his recent interview on WGCL in Bloomington:

(Read more after the leap)

Baron’s complaint about speculators is highly disingenuous.

Why?

Because he voted to create the very loophole he is now complaining about.

Let’s go back to the heady days of 2000, when Baron faced no serious election challenges and gasoline was only about a dollar a gallon.

Legislation, favored and heavily-lobbied-for by soon-to-go-bankrupt energy trader Enron, to change the commodity trading rules. This legislation–H.R.5660, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000–was placed before the Agriculture Committee (among other committees). At that time, Baron Hill sat on the Agriculture Committee.

Eventually, H.R. 5660 was attached to a separate piece of legislation, H.R.4577.

H.R.4577 went before the House for final approval to go to the desk of President Clinton, and Baron voted for it. When gasoline was cheap and Enron was lobbying to change the rules on commdity futures and to unleash the speculators, Baron Hill rose to be counted.

He voted with Enron.

He voted to create the very loophole that he now says he wants to close.

So if Congress can so readily impact the price of a gallon of gasoline, why did Baron Hill vote in favor of legislation that contained a provision that he now says is responsible for increasing those gasoline prices so much?