On the recordFebruary 7, 2012
The reigniting of the American Dream is going to depend upon, once again, those small businesses out there, the entrepreneurs who are willing to take the risks, willing to take their concept and their idea and put it into a business. Along the way, the history of America, as you well described it with the Erie Canal, we can look at all of the other great industrial advances that have been made. There has always been a partnership between the government and the individual companies and the entrepreneurs that are out there. For example, the oil industry has enjoyed for more than a century over $13 billion a year of tax subsidies to encourage the production of oil. And there is an incredibly successful partnership between the government, not only with tax subsidies but making the public lands available for the exploration and the extraction of oil over the last 100 years, creating the wealthiest industry in the world. Now once an industry has matured, as has the oil industry, we should remove those subsidies and use those subsidies for the new industries that we need. We've been discussing since Carter and the first oil embargo the need for American energy security.…
