Reversing President Obama's Offshore Moratorium Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, in the first quarter of this year, the oil companies were actually able to make $35 billion in profits; but in my amendment, we are able to say to them, because of a flaw in leases in the 1990s which required them to pay no royalties on public lands--taxpayers' lands--for oil they're drilling for right now and charging $100 a barrel, $4 a gallon at the pump, that we think there is something wrong when the taxpayers don't get anything back.
And so what my amendment says is that they can't apply for any more leases on taxpayers' land unless they're willing to renegotiate the mistaken leases that were given to them that, by the way, will allow them to escape having to pay $53 billion in taxes, in royalties. That's another word for taxes, ``royalties.'' When you're talking about oil, ``royalties'' is the word we use to describe taxes.
This blank check to the oil industry is absolutely undeserved. The Republican approach to offshore oil royalty policy is to treat the Big Oil companies like royalty and to treat the consumers and taxpayers like peasants. They're just going to give away all these breaks to the oil industry.
You know, Prince William and Kate Middleton just left on their honeymoon. Their royalty honeymoon is just beginning. But for the oil companies who are drilling for free on public land, they have a royalty honeymoon that has been going on for way too long, and today, we're going to give the Members of the House a chance to end the honeymoon on the royalties that the oil industry has to pay.
Now, what are the Republicans going to do? They're going to oppose it. They're going to say, no, we need more tax breaks, $4 billion worth of tax breaks, for the oil industry. And so where are they going to find the money for those additional tax breaks that they want to give to the oil industry? Well, they looked around and they decided that the best place to find it was in Medicare, that is, in the health care that we give to Grandma and Grandpa. And so what they have done is they've set up a drilling rig for the oil industry on top of the Medicare program so they can drill into the pockets of Grandma and Grandpa to find the $4 billion in tax breaks, and then on top of that, protect them against having to pay the royalties, the taxes on where they're already drilling for free on taxpayers' land in our country.
Now, that's an unbelievable combination, and they do it while cutting the renewables budget by 70 percent. Can you believe this? It's 2011. The Republicans have already passed a bill cutting the renewables budget--wind and solar, biomass, geothermal--by 70 percent, and they're setting up an oil rig on top of the Medicare program of Grandma and Grandpa to drill for even more tax breaks for the oil industry. This is just an unbelievable debate that we're having.
And they say over here, ``Well, you know, we're the all of the above party; we want to do it all.'' But the truth is that they're really the oil above all party, and that's what this debate is all about, how can we get even more for the oil industry.
So what my amendment will do is to just give people an opportunity to reclaim that $53 billion from the oil industry and give it to Grandma. Of all the people who don't need a break, a subsidy this year, it's the oil industry. You know who needs a break? You know who needs a subsidy? It's Grandma. Let's not cut Medicare. Let's not cut her health care in order to help the oil industry. Vote ``aye'' for the Markey amendment.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. MARKEY. We have a big choice here. We can reclaim $53 billion from the oil and gas industry that they owe to the American taxpayer and put it into wind and solar and all-electric vehicles and the revolution that we need to transform our country's relationship with OPEC. We should be able to tell OPEC, We don't need your oil any more than we need your sand.
This is a chance here to reclaim the $53 billion in windfall profits by escaping royalties that the oil industry owes, and put it into a new technology innovation agenda that talks about the future of wind and solar and electric vehicles that will transform our relationship with the rest of the planet.
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