Political Quotes

“I was reading the tax bill yesterday, which is not a good read, and I found a provision that was of particular interest to me. Back in the 1990s, I was Deputy Secretary for the Department of the Interior, and we were trying to deal with the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. We have also, since that time, had this little thing called the Deepwater Horizon. There has been a small 9-cents-per-barrel fee that the petroleum industry has been paying for the cleanup of oil spills. The big ones, Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon, there was even more money as a result of the legal action taking care of them. Little oil spills in the rivers and lakes and harbors are cleaned up using that fee. It is about $400 million a year--small, but absolutely essential. In the tax bill, they eliminated that small fee, and it is a $400 million windfall to the petroleum industry. You go: Why would you do that? Who, then, is left to clean up? It is going to be the taxpayer in the State. Mr. Speaker, did the gentleman mention State and local taxes? He is from New York. I am from California. Perhaps the two of us can get in a bit of a rage that the tax bill forces Californians, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians, and Illinoisans to pay a tax on a tax that they have paid. I yield to the gentleman from New York.”