On the recordMarch 27, 2012
I rise today to discuss gas prices. Gas prices have doubled under this President, so today this body will consider new legislation which the other side, I assume, thinks will make the situation better. But their solution is to raise taxes on oil companies--raise taxes by $25 billion. Any of you who have a business know when we raise taxes on a business, it simply is a cost to doing business. When your costs increase for making your product, what do you do? You charge your consumer more. So I am not sure what person is advising the other side, but I do not quite understand how raising $25 billion worth of cost on the oil industry is going to help gas prices. In fact, I think it is going to send gas prices even higher. Some on the other side say: Oh, this is a matter of fairness; everybody needs to pay their fair share. Well, oil companies actually pay $86 million a day in taxes. In the last 10 years the oil companies have paid over $100 billion in taxes. And the people who say, well, we must punish them; they are making too much money; let's punish them, well, the oil companies employ 9.2 million people. They are 8 percent of our GDP. Do we want to punish the people who are creating jobs, the people who are trying to make us energy independent in our country? It makes absolutely no sense. Some will argue, well, we need to make the Tax Code fair, and the oil companies have special exemptions. Well, guess what.…
