Steven Holt: “I would like to address the talking points that have been parroted without thinking by speaker after speaker from the…”

“I would like to address the talking points that have been parroted without thinking by speaker after speaker from the other side. The fact is oil production on onshore public lands, the subject of this legislation, is up by 35 percent. It is not down. It is not flat. It is up. It is up even more than oil production in the country overall. So what is the problem here? As for employment, it is worth pointing out that oil and natural gas industry employment has increased. {time} 1515 Clearly, there was a falloff with the recession--or let's call it a depression--but in the last half-dozen years, industry employment has increased by more than 162,000--a 40 percent increase. Oil and gas industry jobs decreased in 2009 as a result of the recession, but now the jobs are increasing at a rate even faster than before. And I have to emphasize that in connection with this because this legislation says that oil and gas would take precedence over all other uses of Federal lands. Federal lands don't exist solely for the purpose of oil and gas extraction. As I have said before, there is one thing that the Republicans seem to agree on, that we should give away whatever we can to the oil companies. That is why we are doing this legislation, because they don't have any other legislation that they can agree on well enough to bring to the floor.…”