Political Quotes

“as I understand the state of play on the floor--I have been at meetings--it is that I should withhold offering any amendment now. But I am going to speak to an amendment I will be offering during the debate on the emergency supplemental bill. When we last debated budget matters here on the floor, I came to the floor to indicate I was going to attempt to repeal the $2.6 billion in tax breaks the Energy bill afforded the oil industry. I want to give my colleagues the context in which I raised it then, raise it now, and will raise it again. It is very easy, I understand--I have been here a long while--to demagog the oil prices and oil industries and big companies, and, when things get tough, to talk about blaming everybody's problems on profits of companies. Well, the President, today, spoke, as many of us have up to now, on the need to investigate and determine whether there is any gouging going on with energy prices today by American oil companies. But that is not why I am here at this moment. Senator Specter, the chairman of our Judiciary Committee, held a hearing in the Judiciary Committee a couple weeks ago, before the Easter recess, where he summoned, if I am not mistaken, the CEOs of the six largest oil companies. It may have been only four oil companies and one gas company and one energy company. But I think it was six. I will get for the Record exactly how many. But he included the chairman of the board of Exxon and other major oil companies.…”