Political Quotes

“To those that propose this bill, I want to tell you I support a large fund for renewables. I am for all renewables. But why did you choose to tax American-produced oil and gas and not tax foreign oil and gas? When you tax our production, you will have less of it, when you tax their production, you would have less foreign. You have stacked the deck. It is already cheaper to produce foreign energy than it is American energy. We have locked up so many of our fields, and where in old tired fields the cost of producing has increased, the incentive to go in deep water because it cost so much companies wouldn't go there, and we couldn't even get there. In 10 years since I have been here, we have increased foreign oil from 46 percent to 66 percent. Why is foreign energy taking over? Ninety percent of the land in this country available for oil production is government land, and this Congress has been locking so much of it up. I totally agree with a large renewable energy fund, but instead of increasing the cost of producing energy in America, open up new fields. The Outer Continental Shelf is our greatest untouched area. We are the only civilized country in the world that doesn't produce there. Everybody produces there. It makes no sense for us not to be there. We haven't even allowed seismic testing to find out what is there because we might produce it.”