With the summer driving season underway, Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) will hold two press conferences on Thursday, May 29 to unveil a series of short, medium, and long-term solutions that will help curtail gas prices now, make a more significant impact over the next several years, and ultimately lead the country away from oil and toward a renewable energy based economy that includes solar and other clean energy applications for vehicles and buildings.

Hinchey will hold a press conference at 11:00am in Binghamton at One Stop Grocery located at 283-285 Front Street and a second press conference at 3:00pm outside of the Finger Lakes VFW Hall located at 423 West State Street in Ithaca. Both venues will have a gas station as a backdrop.



In the short term, Hinchey will outline a variety of new legislative steps on which he is working, including a bill that would give the president the authority to cap gas prices at $2.49 per gallon. In the mid-term, Hinchey will highlight new efforts to provide tax incentives for fuel efficient vehicles in order to help reduce demand for gas while getting cleaner cars on the road. He will also discuss the need to help provide subsidies for the use of mass transit to help reduce the demand for gas. In the long-term, Hinchey will discuss plans for dramatic investments in solar energy and other renewable sources of power in order to eventually phase out oil and other fossil fuels as sources of energy.



Additionally, the congressman will highlight legislation recently passed in the House to help lower energy prices. Among other things, those provisions include bills to: temporarily suspend oil purchases for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in order to increase market supply of oil and thus help reduce prices; boost homegrown biofuel production from non-food crops; provide the U.S. Department of Justice with the authority to take legal action against OPEC-controlled entities for participating in oil cartels that drive up oil prices; and extend a variety of tax incentives for solar and other renewable energy products.