Texans Overcharged For Electricity And Gas

Less than a week before the election, we find more evidence of how the Republicans are allowing their corporate masters to screw the citizens of Texas. Austin director of Public Citizen, Tom "Smitty" Smith said, "It looks like consumers are getting gouged by both the electric utility and the gas utility."

Back when hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the gulf coast, the disasters created a short-term shortage of natural gas, which is used to fire many electric generators in Texas. At the time, TXU raised their rates to cover higher gas prices. But the gas prices went back down months ago, while the higher electric prices are still being charged to Texas citizens.

It seems that the law the Republicans passed to deregulate electric rates allows the electric company to raise rates in an emergency, but does not allow the state government to make TXU lower the rates when the emergency is over. This has allowed TXU to reap windfall profits from their overcharging. It is estimated that TXU has overcharged by $700 million. This equates to about an extra $41 a month on a consumer's electric bill.

This comes on the heels of news that the gas utility, Atmos, is asking the Texas Railroad Commission to allow it to raise its rates about $63 million a year overall. Some are saying that Atmos wouldn't need to raise rates if it would control its own unneccessary spending. Some examples of this are $200,000 in meal and entertainment expenses over the last year, $75,000 used to purchase artwork, the buying of a set of chairs costing $2,000 each, and purchase of airline tickets costing over $1,700 apiece so an executive and his wife could attend Bush's inauguration.

When they were trying to get deregulation passed, the Republicans assured us it would result in savings for ordinary Texans. Instead, it has done just the opposite. It has allowed the utility companies to gouge Texans and create windfall profits for themselves. Thanks, Republicans!!!

On November 7th, we have an opportunity to turn this situation around by voting the Republicans out of office. Let's do it.