No More Subsidies for Oil Companies

NO MORE SUBSIDIES FOR OIL COMPANIES -- (House of Representatives - April 30, 2008)

(Mr. COHEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, the price of gasoline has reached another record high, nearly $4 a gallon. And yet when the Democrats, along with Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic majority, have asked the President to stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is 97 percent full and which experts say could lower the price of gasoline by 5 to 24 cents a gallon, the President says he doesn't believe the cost benefit analysis of immediate action for consumers persuaded him.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that the President consider how Americans are suffering with the price of gasoline at the pump, how that's limiting their other choices in expenditures, and how it will reduce their opportunity for summer vacations.

Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I signed on to a bill for a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Oil companies presently have subsidies given to them in the past, which this Congress tried to repeal but we didn't have bipartisan support to repeal those subsidies. So these companies making more money than ever have subsidies rather than windfall profit taxes.

Mr. Speaker, we need to look out for the motoring public.

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