Marcy Kaptur: “I imagine that I am not the only Member who hears from constituents regularly when oil companies report record profits…”

“I imagine that I am not the only Member who hears from constituents regularly when oil companies report record profits, particularly with gas prices being what they have been over the past year. Last Friday, the New York Times had this headline: World's Largest Oil Companies Gushing Profits. The Times story followed a report that ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded company, had enjoyed the largest annual profit for any company in history, almost $40 billion in 1 year, at a time when extraordinarily high gasoline prices were punishing the budgets of almost every family in our country and punishing the budgets of every business in our country. Did ExxonMobil lower the prices at the pump to adjust for these egregious profits? Absolutely not. In its first order of business, it spent almost $10 billion to buy back its own stock, and then it took some of its profits to create a disinformation campaign against the panel on climate change. And, finally, this week what did ExxonMobil do? It went after the State of Alabama, and lawyers for the company asked the Alabama Supreme Court to overturn a $3.5 billion punitive damage award that was made by a jury 3 years ago when it found that Exxon had defrauded the State of royalties for natural gas production in Mobile Bay. Actually, the original fine had been $11.9 billion. You know, it must be hard being a giant oil company these days. It must be hard work making so much money you don't know how to spend it.”