Ed Markey: “I yield myself 5 minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, we are at a historic juncture in our country's history, as northern…”

“I yield myself 5 minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, we are at a historic juncture in our country's history, as northern Africa and the Middle East explode. And what we have, of course, is a real instability in the oil marketplace, and we have to do something that fundamentally responds to that challenge. In the first 3 months of this year, Exxon-Mobil made $10 billion off of the American consumer--in January, February, and March of this year. Shell reported that they had made $8 billion. BP reported that they had made $7 billion. So what are these companies asking for? These companies are now asking that we open up the beaches of California to drill for oil, we open up the beaches of Florida to drill for oil, we open up the beaches of New Jersey and New England to drill for oil. I will tell you right now, in most of those places--actually, in all of those places, the only oil the people who live near those beaches want is the suntan oil that they use when they're out on those beaches. They don't want oil coming in the way it did in the Gulf of Mexico. And why are they concerned? They're concerned because the oil companies, exercising their power--and right now, those oil companies are centered down in the Gulf of Mexico--those companies have exercised their power to block any new safety reforms from being put in place that would protect against another catastrophic spill.…”