Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. We continue to talk about this as if this were the President's fault. First of all, in a much wider range, this is a result of the pandemic. Why is it the result of the pandemic? Not solely the pandemic but let me take the pandemic first. Everybody stayed home--this body and businesses across America. What did that mean that they stayed home? They stopped buying gas. What did the oil companies do? They shut down some of their production, a very substantial reduction in production. But then as the prices went up, they were making as much money or much more money. So in making much more money, they didn't increase production, as the gentleman says will be an answer to the question, in a country that does, in fact, have regulations and does have rules, and because of those regulations and rules the production of our energy is, in fact, as the gentleman asserts, more efficient and more environmentally considerate. The oil companies--acting from what they thought was good business practice, demand was down, but prices were going up--were making profits. They bought back stock, which, of course, increased the value of the stock that remained. They increased dividends, which, of course, encouraged people to invest in them. It made people happy about their investments. But they didn't increase production. They didn't have to increase production.…”