Maurice Hinchey: “this is a troubling moment. If we were in the military, I think that we might be charged with dereliction of duty. The…”

“this is a troubling moment. If we were in the military, I think that we might be charged with dereliction of duty. The most important security issue that this Nation has to deal with is the issue of energy, doing things to decrease our dependence on foreign energy, particularly foreign oil. We are now importing about 60 percent of the oil that we use on a daily, monthly, and annual basis. This bill does little to deal with that problem. Instead, what it does do is it gifts the oil industry with enormous amounts of tax concessions and tax breaks. The oil industry, of course, is now suffering from a very serious problem: They have more cash on hand than they know what to do with. They do not know what to do with all the money coming in from these high gasoline prices, high heating prices, and yet now we are going to dump a whole bunch more money on them. We should be doing something that looks forward. If this bill were before the Congress in 1955, some people might say it was a forward- looking bill. But in 2005, it does nothing but look backward and does nothing to help our energy dependence and overall energy situation. I hope we defeat it.”