Ron Wyden: “the reason Senator Kyl and I feel so strongly about this, this is a program that is out of control. The fact is that…”

“the reason Senator Kyl and I feel so strongly about this, this is a program that is out of control. The fact is that even the sponsor of this program, our distinguished former colleague, Senator Johnston of Louisiana, said this program is not operating as Senator Johnston intended. A brief bit of history is relevant. This program began in the 1990s, when the price of oil was under $20 a barrel. The point of the program, as devised by Senator Johnston, nobody could really argue with. We needed to produce energy, and with the economic situation in that part of the country, folks were hurting. They devised this program. But no one can make a case for a program that began when oil was $19 a barrel, when the price of it is now over $70 a barrel. We have a situation where the companies are charging record prices. They are making record profits. We certainly do not need record subsidies, particularly at a time when we have a program that even the sponsor of the original effort says is not working. This is the biggest subsidy in the energy area. This is one of the biggest boondoggles we have seen operated by the Federal Government. The fact of the matter is, there have been mistakes made under both Democratic and Republican administrations. As I outlined for the Senate several months ago, the initial mistakes were made by those in the Clinton administration which did not lock in the appropriate price thresholds.…”