Political Quotes

“the special interests may have gained access to the Capitol, but the American people are paying for it. My colleague from Oregon talked about the prescription drug bill. It is a classic example when you see what happens to seniors across all of our districts who are not more than confused but have to fill out more than 30 pages of forms to get a single drug, where the drug companies or HMOs or insurance companies that are providing the plan can switch drugs like that at any moment, but they cannot switch out. The basic tenet of business is to take care of the customer first. If this was designed with the customer in mind, it really does come as a surprise. But I will tell you what is happening in the industry of healthcare specifically as we talk about the pharmaceutical industry and the prescription drug bill is happening in the energy area. The energy industry last year spent $87 million to lobby the United States Congress. Now what did they get for that $87 million? They got $14.5 billion in taxpayer support to drill for oil. We are paying ExxonMobil, Texaco $14.5 billion to drill for oil when energy is at a little over 60 bucks a barrel. For their $87 million of investment, they got taxpayers to fork over $14.5 billion. And we pay at the pump nearly 3 bucks a gallon, the highest price in a long time, and yet we also pay on April 15 with tax breaks for big oil, Texaco, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and all the other big oil companies, BP Amoco.…”