Dennis Kucinich: “first of all, at the appropriate time, I will enter some extraneous information into the Record. Mr. Speaker, it is very…”

“first of all, at the appropriate time, I will enter some extraneous information into the Record. Mr. Speaker, it is very clear when we look at what has happened in the last few years where we have had a number of mergers of oil companies, the top five oil companies, I believe, now dominate more than a third of the market. As a result, we see that prices keep increasing as market concentration increases. This is a clear example of what happens when monopolies dominate an economy. We have high prices, and we also have manipulation of supplies, increased profits; and now we have price gouging. With this manipulation of supply, we are also seeing an attempt today to attack our environmental laws. That puts us in a position where we sacrifice not only the standard of living of many Americans to the oil companies but now we are sacrificing the environment itself. I think that many Americans are already aware that one of the reasons that we are in Iraq is because of oil. I mean, very few people would dispute that now. There were no weapons of mass destruction, they are not going to have a democracy there, but the administration is preparing to stay there for the long haul, and it is because of oil. Oil is corrupting this government. Oil is costing us peace in the world. Oil is putting us on a path to economic ruin. Oil is dominating this political process right now. We need to take a new course. We can start with the windfall profits tax, but we have to go beyond that.…”