Ron Wyden: “Not long ago when the oil company executives came before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I went down the…”

“Not long ago when the oil company executives came before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I went down the line and asked them if they needed the various tax breaks. To a person, they all said no. So now we are seeing a bit of discussion about whether all of these tax breaks are needed by people in the oil business. It is one thing to talk about new initiatives--and we will be debating a variety of additional approaches, windfall profits taxes and the like--and it is quite another to be spending billions and billions of dollars out the door when those subsidy payments defy common sense, defy essentially what the President of the United States said, that we ought to get out of the subsidy business when oil is over $50 a barrel. That is what I am proposing in this particular amendment. What it comes down to is the U.S. Government ought to stop adding sweetener to the Royalty Relief Program. At every opportunity over the last few years--and I see the distinguished Senator in the chair has zeroed in on wasteful programs, to his credit, for a long time--at every opportunity we have seen this program sweetened and sweetened and sweetened, all at the taxpayers' expense.…”