Barbara Boxer: “I want to tell my friends from Illinois and Minnesota that I intend to yield to them under this unanimous consent…”

“I want to tell my friends from Illinois and Minnesota that I intend to yield to them under this unanimous consent request. Let me set the stage, before I do that, by encapsulating in a very few minutes why I think the Hutchison amendment is not a good idea, why I think it is dangerous for the Senate to put its imprimatur on the Hutchison amendment, and why I think it is wrong for the taxpayers to continue to be cheated out of millions and millions of dollars. Mr. President, if rushing through this center door here in this beautiful Senate Chamber we saw someone with a bag full of cash that he or she had stolen, we would call the police. Yet what is going on today on behalf of 5 percent of the oil companies is out and out thievery. Those are strong words, but they are backed up. Listen to the words of USA Today. They say: Imagine being able to compute your own rent payments and grocery bills, giving yourself a 3 to 10 percent discount off the marketplace. Over time, that would add up to really big bucks. And imagine having the political clout to make sure nothing threatened to change that cozy arrangement. They say: It is time for Congress to clean up this mess. Yet the amendment we have before us continues this mess.”