Pete Domenici: “I congratulate Senator Hutchison on the argument she offered today. She indicated that the last three times we have done…”

“I congratulate Senator Hutchison on the argument she offered today. She indicated that the last three times we have done this, I have either been the sponsor and she the cosponsor, or vice versa. I am here today to again indicate that whoever follows us and talks about the fact that we ought to stick big oil, or we ought to make sure there are no longer any slick deals, as I see some of these comments that are going to be made here on the floor, let me suggest that if you are taxing anything in the United States and you are doing it wrongly or unfairly or without justification under the law, then it doesn't matter whether somebody is going to lose money if in fact Congress says you have to stop doing that. That is what we have here. We are going to have Senators argue that there are certain oil companies that are not going to have to pay. There have been settlements where they have paid. But the truth of the matter is, the intention of this law is, if you are going to change it materially, Congress is supposed to be involved. We have tried to get involved. In fact, for 6 months we have mutually attended hearings with the MMS and the oil producers and talked about what was wrong with these regulations and rules. Everybody on both sides was saying, let's fix them; let's modify them; let's change them.”