Tim Ryan: “You are exactly right, and it is that. It is the cost of the American people of the kind of corruption that is inherent…”

“You are exactly right, and it is that. It is the cost of the American people of the kind of corruption that is inherent in this system today as the Republicans run the House and the Senate and the White House. Let me just say this so we are clear. After record profits had been earned by the oil industry, they received in the energy bill $12 billion in corporate welfare, but nothing is done by this Congress to address lowering gas prices or home heating oil. Now, Halliburton, the former company of Vice President Cheney, got billions of dollars in no-bid contracts, and they have since been fined $2 million for over charging the government and are suspected of costing the government $1.4 billion. Halliburton has been fined for basically stealing the taxpayers' money. The oil industry is getting $12 billion in subsidies, and nothing is being done to lower Mom and Dad or Grandma or Grandpa's gas cost, and the top Medicare administrator, Tom Scully, negotiated to get a lobbying job at the same time he was negotiating the Medicare prescription drug bill, which helped companies more than it helped senior citizens. You say corruption tax, and that is what I mean. Tit- for-tat, taxpayer pays for it. Corporate welfare to the oil industries, nothing to lower gas prices, citizens pay that corruption tax.”