Mary Fallin: “you know, in America, I still believe that a man's word is a man's word. And in America, contract rights are property…”

“you know, in America, I still believe that a man's word is a man's word. And in America, contract rights are property rights. And the fifth amendment prohibits the government from taking away those property rights without due process and without just compensation. Under the Democrat energy bill, contract rights are bona fide leases that are taken away. You cannot sell your lease, you cannot transfer your lease, you cannot derive any economic benefit from your lease until you open up your lease renegotiation. This is a complete elimination of value of these valid and binding contracts. The Supreme Court has long held that when this occurs property owners must be compensated. The Democrat energy bill doesn't recapture the money lost from the Clinton administration's badly written leases, it just opens up the floodgates for takings litigation. This is a trial lawyer's dream bill. Federal takings claims and property disputes are notoriously long. They can take a long time to resolve. Now, there was a bipartisan resolution and a vote in Congress to fix the lease mess, but last year's language was killed by the other body. It had a fix on the leases that would give back $10 billion to the American taxpayers. The Democrat bill, as written, will hurt offshore investment in drilling by American companies, which in turn does nothing to reduce our U.S. dependence on foreign energy.”