Nick Rahall: “as I understand, if I am on the right amendment, the pending amendment drops some provisions of the underlying…”

“as I understand, if I am on the right amendment, the pending amendment drops some provisions of the underlying legislation such as new royalty relief, which should never have been part of the bill to begin with. On balance, however, the amendment consists of budget gimmickry designed to hide the true costs to the Treasury of the bill and to pacify CBO by pushing the spending beyond the 10-year scoring window. Under the manager's amendment, State revenue sharing will cost the Federal Treasury $18 billion in the first 10 years under the CBO analysis. According to the MMS, Minerals Management Service, which administers the offshore OCS oil and gas leasing program, this legislation's provisions for diverting Federal revenues to States will cost $74 billion over the first 15 years and a staggering $600 billion over six decades. So under the manager's amendment, the new gimmickry, as I understand it, the Federal spending is largely deferred until 10 years and then the costs escalate rapidly and continue permanently. So that is the basis for my opposition. It is a new, permanent entitlement program with 80 percent of the diverted Federal revenue goes only to four States, as we have heard in previous debate, those States being Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi. This is revenue that is generated from the development of oil and gas resources owned by all the American people. All of our names are on the deed.…”