Marcy Kaptur: “this week, ExxonMobil reported it beat its own record for the highest annual profits ever recorded by any company with…”

“this week, ExxonMobil reported it beat its own record for the highest annual profits ever recorded by any company with its net income rising to $40.6 billion in 2007, the highest record profits of any company in American history. Those profits are due to the surging oil and gasoline prices that we are all paying. Meanwhile, here in Washington, the establishment sits around the table in anticipation of the President's budget proposal. Lobbyists, advocates, lawmakers, and agency heads wait in anticipation. This year it seems that the President has outdone himself by pushing up our national debt to $9.2 trillion, nearly $10 trillion. When President Bush took office, gasoline cost $1.45 a gallon. When he took office, gasoline cost $1.45 and we were showing surpluses after the discipline we had exacted here during the 1990s, surpluses in our budget of $5.6 trillion. Now gasoline regularly rises above $3 a gallon and the annual budget is in the red, his latest budget as submitted by over $407 billion, and you know it is going to rise to over half a trillion dollars with the war costs. What a story. While the Nation goes deeper into the red with higher gas prices and bigger deficits, oil companies are making out like bandits. Compare a $407 billion budget deficit for our country with $40.6 billion in exorbitant profits taken in by ExxonMobil in 2007. ExxonMobil posted the largest profit in U.S. history, sucking those dollars from our people.…”