Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Washington for his refreshingly rare vote for Ukraine military aid and also the chairman, Mr. Westerman, for joining Democrats in that very important vote in the interests of our national security. I think, as we continue with this debate, it is worth talking about just what a fiscal and financial boondoggle drilling in the Arctic refuge is. It is, first of all, a proposition that is so deeply unpopular that the only way it became law was to sneak it into the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the Trump tax scam. Two lease sales were included in the legislation to partly offset tax cuts for the wealthy. Initially, Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration claimed that these lease sales would bring in $1.8 billion in revenues for the Federal Government and the State of Alaska through bonus bids, and they proceeded to give a whole bunch of tax cuts away to billionaires and corporations on the basis of this illusory offset. Later, the Congressional Budget Office lowered the estimate to $900 million, specifically $725 million for the first lease sale. Fast forward to the first lease sale that finally took place in 2021 in the final days of the Trump administration. Guess what happened? Well, it generated less than $15 million--not billion--in bonus bids, around 2 percent of what even CBO's reduced estimate had projected.…”