Kagen: High Fuel Prices Helped Ground Midwest Airlines
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Congressman Steve Kagen, M.D. today said that Midwest Airlines’ announcement to lay off 40 percent of its employees was caused by record fuel prices and signals the urgency for lowering energy costs for businesses and families.
“When well-managed companies with hard-working employees are forced to make such drastic cuts, the time has come for the White House and its allies to do something,” Kagen said. “Midwest Airlines really does have the best care in the air but is being punished by this administration’s failure to solve the energy crisis.”
Kagen called again on President George W. Bush sell some of the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as a means to quickly ease upward pressure on fuel prices. The SPR is currently at 97 percent of capacity, the fullest the reserve has ever been. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, oil from SPR deployment could hit the domestic market less than two weeks after a Presidential decision.
Deploying a small portion of the resources in the SPR would provide much needed assistance to American consumers and businesses facing crippling prices, Kagen said, without endangering national security.
“We are working hard to find a way forward,” Kagen said. “Drilling for new oil, investing in renewable energy and preventing manipulation of oil prices in our free markets will work in the long term, but in the short term we must take steps to help business who are being forced to cut back, and working families who are struggling.”
