Frist: Government Needs to Investigate High Gas Prices

April 25, 2006 — -- This morning, President Bush will propose a four-point plan that includes investigating oil companies and investing in alternative fuel, but experts say the plan will probably not do too much in the short term to ease the pain commuters feel -- and they are blaming the politicians.

"I have difficulty believing that a president who has interests in oil is really concerned about the well-being of people who are paying so much for it," one motorist said to ABC News.

Politicians blame each other, and oil companies and regular people seem to agree.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Speaker of the House Rep. Dennis Hastert, R- Ill., sent a letter to the president urging him to investigate gasoline price gouging and whether or not the market was being manipulated.

"This $2.91 -- over $3 in some areas right now -- cannot be sustained by the person driving their kids to school or filling up their tractor with fuel," Frist said. "There is no silver bullet -- that's obvious to most people now -- but we need to make sure, though, the price is ultimately determined by supply and demand, that the markets themselves work."

Frist said that Big Oil's record profits needed to be investigated by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Over the last four years, profits for companies like Exxon Mobil Corp. have jumped more than 260 percent. Last fall, the Senate held hearings to investigate why this was happening, but Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., said that was not enough.

"The president should have called the head of the oil companies into the White House … a week ago," Kennedy said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"He ought to be pointing out that hardworking Americans, middle-class people who have their sons and daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan, that this is not a time for greed."

Frist said that oil executives had told the Senate that those profits would be invested in increasing the supply of oil -- which would eventually drive prices down -- and that the Senate needed to speak to the executives again to see whether or not that had happened.