Political Quotes

“this country has a $13 trillion national debt and a record-breaking deficit, and it is time we began to address that issue. This country has the potential now to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel, away from offshore drilling into energy efficiency and sustainable energy, and when we do that, we create millions of good-paying jobs over a period of years. That is what this amendment does. Over the last decade, the five largest oil companies in America-- ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, and Shell--made over $750 billion in profits. These profitable companies do not deserve to continue to have major tax breaks that in some cases not only prevent them from paying anything in taxes but enable them to get huge tax refunds from the IRS. What the Sanders-Menendez-Whitehouse-Wyden-Lautenberg amendment would do is eliminate three major loopholes. It would bring $35 billion into our coffers over a 10-year period. It would use $25 billion of those $35 billion for deficit reduction. It would use $10 billion to fund energy conservation and sustainable energy and in the process create over 100,000 new jobs over a period of years. It may make sense to somebody, but it does not make sense to me that we have a company such as ExxonMobil, which has been the most profitable company in the history of the world, making huge profits and last year not only paying nothing in taxes but getting a refund from the Treasury of $156 million.”