Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “Let's break it down further, Mr. Meek. If that was not enough evidence, let's take a look at a Congressional Research…”

“Let's break it down further, Mr. Meek. If that was not enough evidence, let's take a look at a Congressional Research Service report, which is an objective body which provides information to the Congress, both parties, totally objective entity, provided a memo to Senator Wyden last week, and that memo outlined the profits and revenue return for the oil companies from 1999 to now. And it demonstrated that the annual revenue return for eight oil companies increased from 2.88 percent in 1999 to 7.1 percent in 2005 while the return on shareholder equity went from 4.64 percent to almost 30 percent. Cash reserves for those same companies shot up from $9.5 million in 1999 to $57.8 million last year, and the capital investment that they made went from $32.8 million to $68.8 million in the same period. The bottom line is that when they say they are investing their revenue that they are generating into alternative oil exploration, it is baloney. It is absolutely not true. What they are doing is they are keeping their profits. They are holding onto their profits, and we are giving them the money by forgiving them royalty payments for the land that we are letting them drill for oil on. So who is for the American people and who is just kidding?”