Jim Inhofe: “let me respond, firstly, if I can, to the assistant majority leader. First, it is easy to point the finger at oil…”

“let me respond, firstly, if I can, to the assistant majority leader. First, it is easy to point the finger at oil companies. That is the easiest ``out,'' because everyone has this perception that all oil companies are doing great. Here is the problem you have. If you were to take all profits from oil companies--let's forget about windfall profits; take it all, do not leave any at all for anything else, other than what they are putting into exploration--it would amount to 28 cents a gallon. If you slashed their profits in half, as they are proposing to do, that would be 14 cents. Fourteen cents does not help a lot, at least my wife says it does not. And I think you know we are kidding ourselves. There are solutions to this problem, but that is not one of them. Then as far as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, we are putting about 50,000 barrels per day in there right now. If we were to halt that, over the course of a year it would equal less than one day of U.S. consumption. That is not what I call a fix. Fourteen cents a gallon is not a fix, one day of time is not a fix. But there are some things we can do. We do have an amendment, amendment No. 4720. It is by our leader, Senator McConnell, and by Senator Domenici. This actually was a bill. It was going to be the Domestic Energy Production Act of 2008, but we are offering it now as an amendment. This would handle a lot of the problems.…”