Political Quotes

“Well, you have another chart there that showed the oil that is pumped and the price of gasoline. Congresswoman Speier, you used this before. And you asked me: If we take away the subsidies, will it increase the cost of gasoline? The answer is, categorically: No. First of all, it is an international market that sets the price of gasoline. I should add one little caveat to that. International market and speculation. And I'm going to come to the speculation in a little bit. Anyway, the international market sets the price of gasoline that these Big Five companies buy and the value of the oil that they extract. So the barrel of oil is set internationally. Now if it's set internationally and you take out the speculation, it remains fairly constant. Here's the production. And it has gone up, but it's been rather steady over this period of time. The subsidy is to encourage the production of oil. Well, they've had the subsidy and so the production has been rocking along here. The price of oil is set internationally. What explains this enormous variation in the price of fuel at the pump? Well, it's not production. That's from here. Is it the subsidies? The subsidies are a very, very small part. You're looking at a $137 billion total profit. The subsidy is $5 billion. So it's inconceivable that the subsidy has much to do with the bottom line, other than adding $5 billion, which would be, I guess, if you took the subsidy out, it would be $132 billion. Oh, my, let's whine about that.…”