Political Quotes

“If the gentleman will yield. Like you, I am on the plan going home every week. But for a weekend, I was at a conference, and so I missed being home for 10 days. In the space of 10 days, gasoline went up 19 cents a gallon at my corner gas station; and the next weekend, it had gone up 30 cents a gallon in 3 weeks. That didn't fill one pothole, didn't put one person to work. Thirty cents in 3 weeks. Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. I think it is an excellent point. If we fully implemented Dodd-Frank and reined in some of the commodities speculators, it wouldn't be quite so volatile. But the point is, if we took a tiny fraction of the way they jack it up when you are driving to work every week and invested it, your friends, your neighbors would go to work, your commutes would be better, there would be less damage to your car, the country would be more efficient, and we would lose less jobs overseas. So, if we indexed it and we paid it back over 15 years, we could put somewhere between $120 and $150 billion into the trust fund that would be paid for and paid back over a 15-year period. Another alternative would be to put $1 on a barrel of crude oil. For every $1 you tax a barrel of crude oil today--Texas is at $101.70, I think, when I last checked--that would be less than 1 percent. That raises $4 billion a year to invest in the future of America, its infrastructure, and putting people back to work in this country.…”