With disaster striking the Gulf Coast, thousands of Minnesotans are coming together to donate time, money, and food to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Helping neighbors is what we do in Minnesota, and it is just one of the many things that makes this state great.

Yet at a time when we should be pulling together, big oil companies like Exxon Mobil, that were already earning record profits before this tragedy, have chosen to hike gas prices even higher. Nationally, average gas prices are up almost 30 percent from just last month, and that's on top of a 27 percent increase in the 11 months before that! In the second quarter of this year, even before Katrina hit, Exxon Mobil's profits were up 32 percent, to $7.64 billion.

These big oil companies have added billions of dollars in profits to their coffers — profits that have come straight from the pockets of American families and disaster victims.

It's bad enough that the big oil companies have the audacity to gouge consumers when the chips are down. But higher gas prices ripple through the economy in a way that affects us all. When the cost of energy goes up, families have less money to meet mortgage or college payments. Businesses cannot invest in creating new jobs. And for seniors scraping by on a fixed income, it can mean having to make terrible choices between necessities like food and medicine.

I'm for free enterprise, but I am not for price gouging. That's why I'm proposing to create a "Gas Gougers Penalty." Under my plan, any oil company that gouges customers, whether from a natural disaster or under any other circumstance, will have to pay a substantial penalty into a national trust fund. We can then use that trust fund to help our citizens meet the cost of high energy bills and to wean our nation from foreign oil by investing in renewable energy sources like wind, ethanol, and other forms of biomass.

You can help right now by signing my petition to the chairmen of the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Energy & Commerce Committee, asking them to support my "Gas Gougers Penalty."

It's time to send a strong message to big oil companies that we won't tolerate them gouging consumers at the pump.