He didn't get too far.
Called back to the floor by colleagues, the Utah Republican, wearing flip-flops, khaki cargo shorts and a collared shirt, joined other Republicans on the darkened House floor for rotating speeches pleading with the Democratic leadership to return to session.
The C-SPAN cameras were off and the television lights shuttered, but that didn't stop Bishop and about 40 cohorts from complaining that the Democrats had skipped town without offering any help to an American public suffering from high gasline prices.
“We should come back and stay here and actually solve this problem,” Bishop said Friday after leaving the floor.
The speeches capped off a week of bickering between Republicans and Democrats over how to deal with soaring oil prices, a fight that ultimately ended in stalemate as Congress left town for a five-week summer vacation.
Republicans demanded votes on opening up the outer continental shelf for drilling and clearing any red tape on oil shale production in the West, along with incentives for renewable resource development. Democrats balked, saying that GOP members were just trying to help the oil companies because none of those efforts would affect oil prices in the short term.
Democratic efforts to force oil companies to drill on their current leases or lose them, along with efforts to cut back on tax breaks for large oil companies failed after Republican blockades.
Democrats charged that Republicans speaking on the floor after adjournment were grandstanding - and for the wrong reasons.
“Republicans are too scared to go home to face their constituents after voting against bills to force Big Oil companies to use it or lose it, demand that the president free our oil from the government stockpile and crack down on speculators,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“In a week where Exxon Mobil made the largest quarterly profits by a U.S. corporation, Republicans are staying in Washington to argue that Big Oil deserves more taxpayer lands. Republicans must think Big Oil is paying them by the hour,” Hammill said.
Back on the floor, Bishop, free of any dress code because the House was formally adjourned, spoke to an empty dais but a nearly full gallery of tourists.
His talking points touched a theme he's been pushing for a few weeks: that the lack of action on energy costs hurt the neediest Americans.
“If you're on the lower end of economic scale, on a fixed income, 50 cents of every dollar goes to energy,” Bishop said, noting that even with extended veteran benefits passed this week, Americans are still in a bad spot.
“What we give you in one hand, you're going to lose on the other hand,” he said.
Bishop spoke for about five minutes while one of his colleagues sat in the reporter's gallery above the speaker's chair. Under House rules, a member of Congress had to sit in the gallery with the newspeople because the House wasn't in session. Otherwise, staffers would have had to have close the gallery.
Bishop says members of Congress are going to get an earful from their constituents when they return home for August recess.
“There's pressure that's building to get something accomplished,” Bishop said. “That pressure will eventually burst and I think that we will to address this issue because people are going to demand it.”
tburr@sltrib.com
