Political Quotes

“To the Senator from Louisiana, let me say, when you describe the moratorium or whatever they call it in the gulf, it is even worse in the Arctic, or even on, as I mentioned when I had the map and I showed the National Petroleum Reserve. That is not a name picked out of the sky by the industry. That was set aside by the government to prepare our country for more energy independence decades ago. We cannot even get a permit to go across--in some places, they call it a stream. But everyone else now calls it a big river. It is not. It is a very small area. But a bridge to go over to explore for what you described--we cannot even get onto the land the government set aside that would then determine if we have oil and gas. We believe there is, because obviously they have--it is set aside as the National Petroleum Reserve. But the other piece to this--the Senator hammered away on it and I agree with her--if we are skunks at the garden, so be it, because it is a question of fairness. As the Senator described the 13 percent of the subsidies or incentives they receive, they produce 60 percent of the energy. But her other statistic is even more dramatic. Of the remaining 87 percent of those subsidies, they only produce 40 percent of the energy. If this were a business, you would eliminate that part of the equation because it does not give a good return on investment. But we are still doing that, because there is a lot of politics being played. The point on the tax issue.…”