Sean Patrick Maloney: “I rise against the manager's amendment because it does nothing to correct the rip-off of corporate welfare in the…”

“I rise against the manager's amendment because it does nothing to correct the rip-off of corporate welfare in the royalty-in-kind program. I also rise in opposition to the underlying bill, as it might as well have been written in 1901 instead of 2001. It spends billions of taxpayers' dollars on corporate welfare to help dirty, polluting oil energy sources, old energy sources, and it does little to encourage newer, cleaner fuels. I am particularly disturbed that an amendment was not accepted of mine to delete the royalty-in-kind program and that this manager's amendment does not delete it. The oil companies call it a new way to pay. I call it a new way to rip off America's taxpayers. Recently, because of work in this body and oversight, the oil companies were revealed that they were underpaying dramatically what was owed the Federal Government for oil extracted from federally owned lands. They settled over $5 billion to the Federal Government, admitting that they underpaid the Federal Government. Now that we have tied their payment to market price, they come up with a new idea, they are going to pay in oil. What are we going to do with this oil? We are going to probably take it and send it back to the very same companies who just sold it to us and who have been historically cheating us and let them determine what the price is. I ask, why are we letting the government get into the oil business?”