David Thomas: “No, I am not going to yield. Thank you. This is a little different issue than we talked about before. If you would ask…”

“No, I am not going to yield. Thank you. This is a little different issue than we talked about before. If you would ask these people, do they need it to do these kinds of drilling on the intangibles, that is not geology, which is the one they were talking about, the G&G issue that was in there. Here again, we went through this in another amendment. We continue to do the same thing. We have spent all this time trying to get an energy bill out there to try to encourage new ways to look at energy, trying to look at new opportunities for energy, all of which are very important. Quite frankly, living in a State where we do a lot of this, the people who are willing and able to put the investment in these kinds of new approaches are not the independents. They are the larger companies. They are the integrated companies that are able to do this. This continuing idea that somehow these people are too rich--I had my chart out here a little while ago, talking about the return on revenue and profits. They were down below the middle of all the other industries. If we want to talk about taking away windfall profits and giving it back to everyone, you are starting with the wrong industry. We ought to be talking about the 10 or 12 industries that have a higher return on their sales than do the people in this business of producing the fuel and the energy we need to keep our economy going. If we want to look at having jobs, if we want to look at a growing economy, it is very clear.…”