Political Quotes

“The Republicans act as if they're trying to help the consumer with this legislation. But all they're really doing is helping Big Oil--bigger profits, bigger tax breaks. I mean, the first quarter earnings for the oil companies were bigger than ever, billions of dollars in profits. Even BP, even after the disaster a year ago, was still making huge profits; and, of course, we've got about $4 billion in tax breaks that the Republicans continue to give to the oil companies. No more oil is going to be brought to market because of this legislation. As my colleague from Massachusetts said, we're talking years before any oil could be brought to market. And at the same time, we have the huge environmental risks. The fact of the matter is that the BP oil spill a year ago showed us the environment risks that are involved with deepwater drilling. And there was a bipartisan commission that was put forward; Democrat and Republican testified before the Natural Resources Committee that I serve on. But no Republican effort is being made to implement those recommendations and say, okay, we need to do certain things before we can do offshore drilling in these deepwater areas. Nothing at all. So when you open up these areas under this legislation to new drilling, you're just inviting another BP-type spill because nothing is being done by the Republicans to prevent it.…”