American Jobs And Closing Tax Loopholes Act Of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, 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 Ðlargest oil companies in America--ÐExxonMobil, 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. Let me repeat that. ExxonMobil, the most profitable corporation in the history of the world--year after year, huge profits--last year not only paid nothing in taxes but received a $156 million check from the taxpayers of this country to help them. That is absurd.

ExxonMobil is not the only company to enjoy that kind of outrageous tax treatment. Chevron received a $19 million tax refund; Valero Energy, a $157 million refund; and ConocoPhillips received over $450 million in tax breaks from the oil and gas manufacturing deduction over the past 3 years.

I am going to yield the floor in a moment because I want to refute some of what my friend from Oklahoma will be saying.

Here is what the bottom line is. The bottom line is we have a huge deficit and huge tax breaks for profitable corporations. We have the opportunity now to do what President Obama put into his 2011 budget and eliminate those tax breaks, bring $35 billion more into the Treasury--$25 billion for deficit reduction and $10 billion to create over 100,000 new jobs as we make our country more energy efficient and we move to sustainable energy.

With that, I yield the remainder of my time.

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Mr. SANDERS. I will reserve the remainder of my time. But let me say this to my friend from Oklahoma, who I know is an honest guy. We disagree. We have differences of opinion. It was not my suggestion that ExxonMobil did not pay taxes over those years. That was not my suggestion. But let me say this. He mentioned that they do pay taxes, which is true. But let's understand that ExxonMobil was the most profitable corporation in the history of the world from 2006 through 2008, making $40 billion in profits in 2006, $41 billion in 2007, and $45 billion in 2008. In the midst of a recession, my understanding is they made $19 billion in profits last year.

Would my friend from Oklahoma deny that despite making these huge profits last year, $19 billion, they received--they paid zero in 2009 and in fact received a $156 million refund from the taxpayers of this country? I hope my friend from Oklahoma would comment on whether that is good public policy.

With that, I reserve the remainder of my time.

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Mr. SANDERS. Let me say to my friend from Oklahoma, who talked about the oil companies plowing their money back into new wells, that the big five oil companies spent $270 billion over the past decade buying back their own stock--about $100 billion more than they spent on oil exploration.

My friend from Oklahoma talks about jobs. That is obviously an important issue. I would concede there may be some job loss here, but it is matched by an investment in sustainable energy that will create far more employment than the relatively small number of jobs that might be lost.

I would mention Dr. Krueger, the Chief Economist at the Treasury Department. He has estimated that repealing these tax breaks would lead to a decline in employment in oil and gas production of less than one-half of 1 percent at most. That translates into the potential loss of 1,650 jobs in the oil and gas industry. I do not mean to minimize that. One job lost is one job too many. But on the other hand, in this bill we put $10 billion into the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program, where the estimate is we can create 140,000 jobs over the same period of time. On one hand, we might lose 1,600 jobs; on the other hand, we gain 140,000 jobs.

With that, I reserve the remainder of my time.

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, what we are talking about now is beginning to address the deficit issue in a significant way, and $25 billion over a 10-year period is a good start. I think we cannot continue to have people coming down to the floor of the Senate and saying: Think about the legacy we are leaving our children and grandchildren. And then when it really comes to the point of doing something, of saying to ExxonMobil, which made $19 billion in profit last year and got a $156 million refund from the IRS, you can't have it both ways, this is a time to stand up and do the right thing. Again, it is not just ExxonMobil. It is Chevron, which received a $19 million refund from the IRS. It is Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion of sales last year and received a $157 million refund check.

What we have the opportunity to do now is to, in fact, address the deficit crisis--$25 billion over a 10-year period; create over 100,000 new jobs over that period as we move into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

With that, I reserve the remainder of my time.

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Mr. SANDERS. I am not a liberal but a progressive. Sometime we will talk about the difference.

Mr. President, I did not vote for the $3 trillion war in Iraq. I did not vote for the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks. I did not vote for the Medicare Part D Program which drove up the deficit altogether as a matter of fact. I suspect my friend may have voted the other way on all of those issues which were not paid for.

In terms of ExxonMobil, let's be clear. I don't know what ExxonMobil told my colleague, but I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record what ExxonMobil told the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC. What is reported by the SEC for 2009 is they received a $156 million refund. That is the SEC.

I ask unanimous consent to have this printed in the Record.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD

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