Ed Markey: “the Republican bill will spend $34 billion, and these are huge breaks, a royalty holiday, meaning the oil and gas…”

“the Republican bill will spend $34 billion, and these are huge breaks, a royalty holiday, meaning the oil and gas companies will not have to pay for going on public lands. Other huge breaks. Now, where are they going? They just had a huge tax break for the upper 1 percentile just 3 months ago. We have run out of the real surplus. Now people say well, you know what, we still have the Social Security, and we still have the Medicare surpluses. So here is what they are doing. They are about to build their oil rigs, their gas rigs, on top of the Social Security trust fund, on top of the Medicare trust fund, and they are about to begin to drill so they can pump it dry. They are going to build a pipeline, a pipeline into the pockets of the senior citizens in our country. That is where the money has to come from. Now, they did not allow the Democrats to make an amendment so that we could have the $34 billion come out of the tax break for the upper one-half of one percent percentile, who, after all, is also going to get this $34 billion. It is going to be a rig that goes directly into Social Security and Medicare, and they are not allowing us to make an amendment to stop this, and that is wrong. That is what this whole debate is all about.”