Press Release

GAS PRICES MAKE IT HARD TO PAY OUR BILLS
Tennesseans struggle to meet all of their obligations

KNOXVILLE – Tennesseans are having to make unthinkable choices with their checkbooks as the price of gas climbs toward $4 a gallon, U.S. Senate candidate Mike Padgett said Tuesday.

“There are families who are juggling their utility bills and their grocery money so they can keep enough gas in the car just to get back and forth to work,” Padgett said. “I have heard about young people who can’t pay phone bills due this week because they’ve spent what’s left of their paychecks on gas.

“The Senate voted yesterday to hold off on buying oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a way to force prices down – as I suggested in my Energy 2.0 plan last week. We could go even further: How about refusing to stockpile any more oil in the SPR until the price goes below $80 a barrel?”

In his Energy 2.0 plan for cleaner, cheaper energy, Padgett calls for innovative thinking. His proposals – such as allowing American drilling of Cuban oil reserves and development of “green energy industries” – are aimed not only at cutting energy costs but at creating American jobs. Much of it could be paid for if tax breaks going to the oil industry are ended. (See details at www.votepadgett.com/issues/energy20.)

“I have offered an action plan while Senator Alexander goes to Oak Ridge and gives a speech on energy that includes few, if any, new ideas and no mention of the opportunity to create jobs.

“All talk and no walk means $3.79-a-gallon gas. That’s what folks are paying today in Jackson and Cleveland, Tenn.

“And it begs the question: Where has Senator Alexander been on this issue for the last five years?

“I’ll tell you where he’s been: He has joined his Republican friends in Congress and at the White House protecting monstrous tax breaks for the oil industry. He has been part of the spending spree that has put this country perilously in debt, crippling the dollar and leaving us vulnerable to these high gas prices.

“And he had the unmitigated gall yesterday to praise last year’s energy bill, when the truth is that he and the rest of the Senate Republicans, along with President Bush, threatened to block the bill in December if it ended subsidies to Big Oil. Only when the subsidies were put back in place did they agree to sign off on it.

“I have talked to Tennesseans in 64 counties over the last few weeks, and to a person, none of them can think of a single way Senator Alexander has worked to make their lives any better. I ask them to stand with me, and I will make their needs my mission in Washington.”

William "Mike" Padgett is former Knox County Clerk and small business owner. He and Patty, his wife of 37 years, have three grown children, Matt, Mark and Sara Beth

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