Political Quotes

“Madam President, I want to speak for a moment to the issue that was raised by my colleague from Missouri. Senator Claire McCaskill came to the Senate floor to take note of the vote that had just been issued, the rollcall that was just finished on a measure offered by Senator Menendez from New Jersey. It was pretty straightforward. Here is what it said: The Federal tax subsidies of $2 billion a year to the biggest oil companies in America should end right now. The money in those subsidies should be used to develop other forms of energy--good for our future, clean for our environment, lessening our dependence on foreign oil--and the balance should be put into reduction of our deficit. Two billion dollars a year is going to the four biggest oil companies in America. How are they doing? We all know how they are doing. Last year, again, they broke all records in the history of American business, reporting profits of $137 billion. The notion that we would take away $2 billion from these oil companies and put it into deficit reduction and energy research that could be good for our future seems like a given. In fact, it seems so easy that when we had a vote earlier this week to bring up this measure, over 90 Senators voted yes; let's go to it. What happened on this vote today? We needed 60 votes, which sadly has become the norm in this Chamber. We needed 60 out of 100 Senators to say stop the fat-cat subsidies to the oil companies. We couldn't get it.…”