Offshore Production and Safety Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, sports teams often have a motto. They want to describe how they are going to win the event. The Senate Democrats have a motto and it goes something like this, ``I am from the government and I am here to help.''
Beware when your government comes to help. They have figured out there is a problem and the problem is gas prices are rising and people are being hurt by the rising prices. Actually, if we measure inflation the way we did back in the 1970s, we have inflation of 10 percent.
Senator Coburn is exactly right. It has to do with the fact that we are losing the value of our dollar. Our dollar is going down in value because we spend money we don't have and we are running up these enormous deficits. But it is a problem nonetheless.
But those who believe government is always the answer are rushing to rescue us. They are rushing to rescue us from high prices at the gas pump, but they haven't even diagnosed the problem, so they are going to come up with the wrong solution. Their solution is to raise taxes on oil companies. Do my colleagues know what taxes are? Taxes are simply a cost. If you run a business and I raise your costs, you will raise your prices. So let's see. Prices are too high, so we are going to raise the cost, which will raise the prices further. It makes absolutely no sense.
It is because their motto is wrong. Their motto is, ``I am here from the government and I am going to help you.'' Their motto is, ``It is the government that is going to solve your problems.'' But they are going to solve your problems by compounding your problems.
The price of gasoline is a problem. If we include the price of gasoline and the price of food in the CPI, it would be 10 percent or higher. People are struggling to pay for gas. What are the main things people who are just getting by pay for? Their gas, their food, their rent. So how are we going to make it better? We are going to make it worse before we make it better. We are going to raise costs to the oil companies by raising their taxes, which means we will pay more at the pump.
It is economic illiteracy and it is what is wrong up here in Washington. We still have too many people who do not understand the basic economic realities. If you raise costs on a business, if you raise taxes on a business, you will raise prices at the pump.
The interesting thing is, there are some answers. They say: Well, let's go after those greedy oil companies because they are making a profit. Out of every $1 you spend at the pump, about 7 cents is profit to the oil companies. Well, do you know what. If you eliminate profit, you will not have oil companies. Everybody works for a profit. We all work harder because we want to maximize our profit.
Who owns the oil companies? Is it a bunch of greedy rich people running their fingers through piles of gold? Are they Midas in some room full of gold? You own the oil companies. I own the oil companies. If you have a 401(k), if you have an IRA, if you have a mutual fund, you own the oil companies. OK. Corporations are owned by people.
Do some people make a lot of money in the corporations? Yes, but if we limit that or try to obscure that or try to get rid of profit, you will get rid of companies. Then where will they go? They will go overseas. Oil companies are international. If you make it hard for them to do business here, they will flee our country. And they already do. We have high corporate taxes in our country, so they keep their profits overseas.
Lower corporate taxes--do not raise taxes--lower taxes and people will bring their profits home to the United States.
This is their profit, as shown on this chart: The oil companies make about 7 cents on the dollar. How much does the Federal Government take? The Federal Government takes 18 cents of every $1.
Do you want to have lower gas prices this summer? Do you want to help the people who are struggling? Let's have a gas tax holiday. It is only a short-term solution, but let's get rid of the 18 cents for the next 4 months through the summer season. It will cost the Treasury. There will be less money coming into the Treasury: $10 billion to $12 billion over 4 months. Let's take it from somewhere else. We are spending $30 billion a year in foreign aid. This is money we give away to other countries so they can build schools, they can build bridges, so they can rebuild their infrastructure. We give this away to foreign countries. A lot of times it winds up in the hands of foreign leaders who simply steal it. Mubarak was said to have gotten $60 billion over 30 years and accumulated at least $5 billion to $10 billion we can count that he stole. Many of these dictators throughout the African nations, as well as throughout the rest of the world, have simply stolen our foreign aid money and used it for their own personal aggrandizement.
Let's eliminate the gas tax. Let's take the money from foreign aid and let's give it back to the American people who have worked hard to earn it. You cannot do this forever, but you can do it for 4 months, and pay for it by getting rid of foreign aid. That would help people. That would lower the price of gasoline, and that would be a stimulus to the economy.
What I am saying is, let's have a gas tax holiday. Let's eliminate Federal taxes for the next 4 months on gas, and let's take the money that would be lost, put it into the highway fund, but let's take it from money we are giving away to other countries. That would be a short-term answer.
There is also a long-term answer. Senator Coburn was right that much of the price of gasoline rising is from inflation. Basically we are destroying the value of the dollar. But there is another reason gas prices rise: because demand for oil and gas is outstripping the supply.
Why don't we have more supply? Because the current administration is basically an enemy to production, an enemy to drilling, an enemy to all things related to energy. We now are going back and looking at permits to mine coal that have been approved for 10 years. We are taking away drilling permits to drill for oil in Utah, in Alaska, off our coast. If we want gasoline prices to be less, if we want to send less money to Middle Eastern countries that hate us that we have to buy oil from, let's make more here. Let's drill for oil. Let's produce more here. Let's drill in Alaska. Let's open up new places to drill.
Can we do it responsibly? Yes. Nobody wants to damage the environment. Do it responsibly, but let's produce energy here. We have, as Senator Coburn says, 160 million barrels of oil waiting to be extracted. Let's go for it. But we have to have a government that is friendly to energy. We have a government now, an administration that is unfriendly to energy and at every aspect of producing energy places roadblocks. They think for some reason we can get electricity to supply our country from some windmills that are made in China. What we need is, we need oil and gas production in our country. We need nuclear energy in our country. We need coal in our country. We have the ability, we have the resources, but we need to get government out of the way. Instead, what we are doing is placing new obstacles.
There will be a long-term solution that Senator McConnell and our party will introduce. I will support that also. It will encourage domestic production of oil and gas, domestic production of energy. That is what we need. But you are not going to get it until we have new faces here in Washington because the current crop of faces is opposing production at every turn.
I wish to conclude by saying, if you want to help people, even for a short period of time, there is a short-term solution. Let's get rid of the gas tax for 4 months. Let's pay for it by not sending the money overseas to have other countries either steal it or build their own infrastructure. Let's keep those U.S. tax dollars here at home. Better yet, let's keep them in the pockets of the consumers by having a gas tax holiday.
Thank you very much. I yield back the remainder of my time.
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