Orrin Hatch: “I came over to make some remarks in morning business until I heard the remarks of my colleagues on the other side. I…”

“I came over to make some remarks in morning business until I heard the remarks of my colleagues on the other side. I have to say that the windfall profits tax that we enacted a number of years ago, I voted against it. It did not work. It was a disaster. I think this would be an equal disaster. A lot of these folks on the other side are the people who today own a lot of drilling offshore where we know billions of gallons of oil are, who have fought against ANWR where they have estimated at least 6 to 8 billion barrels of oil lie ready to be recovered from a plot of ground as small as 2,000 acres--equal to the Dulles airport acreage. And you could go on and on about how they have made it almost impossible to drill, to build refineries, to do the things that have to be done to bring oil and gas prices down--almost every argument that has come from the other side. And now we are here trying to tax the companies that now are making very good profits, the very companies that are considering how can they find more oil and gas, how can they drill offshore, how can they drill up in Alaska where there is a lot of oil and gas, and how can we duplicate what they have done up there in Canada with their tar sands. Canada has not been stupid about recovery, and it has cost billions of dollars of investment by oil companies to do what they are doing.…”