AN OPEN LETTER TO SPEAKER PELOSI

AN OPEN LETTER TO SPEAKER PELOSI
On Friday August 1, 2008, at 11:23 a.m., your Democrat majority in the House of
Representatives adjourned the House for five full weeks.
House Republicans believe that Congress should not go on vacation until we take
action to lower gas and energy prices for struggling American families.
For the last two months we and our House Republican colleagues have used every
tool at our disposal to try and get you and your Democrat majority to vote on legislation to
lower gas and energy prices by expanding environmentally sound domestic production of
oil and natural gas, improving energy efficiency, and encouraging the development of
alternative energy technologies.
Many of the proposals we have asked you and your Democrat majority to allow us
to vote on are bipartisan proposals that we believe would enjoy the support of a majority
of the Members of the Congress. Yet because you and your Democrat Leadership
personally oppose these proposals, you are not allowing them to come up for a vote. This
past Sunday, you even told George Stephanopoulos that you will never allow this vote to
occur (see transcript on the reverse).
In protest of you and your Democrat majority not allowing an up or down vote on
producing more American energy, we and our House Republican colleagues were
prepared to take to the floor on Friday, August 1, 2008, and speak to the nation. Rather
than allowing that to happen you and your Democrat majority adjourned the House, turned
off the television cameras, shut off the microphones and turned out the lights. Nearly 50
House Republicans remained on the floor of the House in defiance speaking to those
citizens gathered in the galleries and to the media.
Today we have again returned to the Capitol to continue speaking to the thousands
of Americans from all across our country who are visiting the Capitol. We would have
preferred if instead we were joined by our colleagues to have a true debate on this issue
that ended in an up or down vote.
We think it is unconscionable that Congress has gone on vacation before we have
addressed the high gas prices that are crippling our economy and hurting millions of
families. We are asking that you reconvene the House from your five-week vacation and
schedule a vote on legislation to increase American energy production. Let us be clear, we
are not asking for a guaranteed outcome, just the chance to vote.
Signed by: John Boehner, Republican Leader; Roy Blunt, Republican Whip; Adam
Putnam, Republican Conference Chairman; Eric Cantor, Chief Deputy Whip; and
Members of the House Republican Conference