Remember one thing: If you want to be energy independent ... and Democrats intend to achieve that within 10 years ... and if you want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and therefore ... um ... improve our national security situation, you can't do it if you're a Republican because you are too wedded to the oil companies.

We have two oilmen in the White House.... The logical ... follow-up from that is $3-a-gallon gasoline. There is no accident. It is a cause and effect.... a cause and effect.

How dare the President of the United States make a speech today, in April ... many, many, many months after the American people have had to undergo the cost of home heating oil? The woman told me she almost fainted when she received her ... home heating bill over this winter ... and when so many people making the minimum wage, which hasn't been raised in eight years, which has a very low purchasing power, have to go out and buy, gasoline at these prices?

Where have you been, Mr. President? The ... middle class squeeze is on, competition in our country is effected by the price of ... energy and of oil ... and all of a sudden you take a trip outside of Washington, see that the fact that the public is ... outraged about this, come home and make a speech. Let's see that matched in your budget, let's see that matched in your policy, let's see that matched in your separating yourself from your ... patron, Big Oil. Cut yourself off from that anvil that is holding ... your party down and this country down. Instead of coming to Washington and throwing your Republican colleagues under the wheels of the train, which they mightily deserve for being a rubber stamp for your obscene, corrupt policy of ripping off the American people.

Thank you all very much.