Political Quotes

“This amendment is virtually identical once again to amendments that have failed on the House floor by a bipartisan vote, and I'm speaking specifically of last year. Let me give a little bit of a history. In 1995, a Democrat Senator and the Clinton White House negotiated the Deep Water Relief Act. The intent was to promote interest in deepwater leases. According to the 1995 law, the royalty relief is on the volume of oil and gas produced on a lease. While other royalty-relief provisions are dependent upon economic hardship, these are solely dependent on volume produced. While the gentleman's amendment aims to fix the problem by including price thresholds, this issue has been repeatedly settled in courts of law and the courts have determined that including price thresholds to this law would be a violation of the contract law. The U.S. Supreme Court found that the Department did not have the authority to include price thresholds on lease agreements issued under the 1995 law. In fact, the Department of Interior has lost this issue in the district court, the appellate court, and the Supreme Court. Simply stated, including price thresholds on these leases would be illegal. If this amendment passed, the issue would almost certainly be challenged in court, where the Department would again use taxpayer dollars to lose again. Ultimately, this amendment seeks to force U.S.…”