Imposing a Minimum Effective Tax Rate for High-Income Taxpayers - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for about 5 minutes.

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, this is a tough time for Americans. We all know families are sitting around at their kitchen tables struggling to figure out how to make ends meet, but those tough times have not extended to the boardrooms of the five big oil companies.

In 2011 alone, those companies saw more than $100 billion in profits--a sum that is difficult to get your hands around. It is difficult to understand what $1 billion is, let alone $100 billion, not in revenue but in profits. Exxon is sitting on $8 billion that it has not reinvested. Shell is sitting on $13 billion cash in hand. The five largest companies together--BP, Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Shell--have cash resources of $59 billion and have made nearly $1 trillion in profits over the last decade.

Meanwhile, the American taxpayers are not only being forced to hand over larger and larger portions of their paychecks at the pump, they are also being asked to have a share of their taxes go to additional subsidies to these large companies. Let me restate that. When you go to the pump and pay $4 or more, the oil companies make a tremendous profit. There is nothing wrong with making a profit in America, but what seems wrong is that these same companies are then coming to these hallowed Halls and saying: We want a handout from the general fund.

Those companies know there are many other pressing needs in America. Indeed, there are many folks who are hungry across our Nation. There are many families who are hoping but cannot save enough money to send their kids to college. Many families who are pressed by the loss of our manufacturing jobs, our middle-class, living-wage jobs, who are providing for their families on service jobs are having a tough time meeting the mortgage.

Families are struggling, and certainly they would like to see this body say that we understand the challenges so many face. We understand that the cost of tuition for their children is way outpacing inflation, and they are worried about the possibility of their children not having the full opportunities that should be available within our society. They are worried about keeping their homes. They are worried about finding that next job if their current job goes away. But they are wondering why we aren't helping with those problems with these funds instead of giving these funds away to the oil companies. The only explanation they can come up with is that the oil companies are very powerful; they can come here and talk to this Chamber and say: You know, we just want more. It is more important for us to add to the billions we have in the bank than it is to have basic nutrition programs expanded in this country. It is more important for taxpayers to give us money to add to the money we have in the bank than to address the desperate infrastructure funds that are needed around our Nation. It is more important that they give us a handout rather than give a hand up to struggling families in this Nation.

Well, I disagree. I think it is more important to help our families. I think it is more important to help our children. I think it is more important to build our fiscal infrastructure for the economy and for the future. I think it is more important to build the infrastructure through education, the intellectual infrastructure of our Nation that provides both opportunities to individuals and opportunities and strength to our economy as a whole.

There are some who say these giveaways reduce the price of oil at the pump and reduce the price of gasoline. Nothing could be further from the truth. We all know what is driving the price of gasoline. Demand is down because people don't have enough to spend, supply is up, so it is certainly not supply and demand. But what we do have is a big increase in speculators. Speculators are going to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and they are making bets that because of the crisis in the Middle East, because of the issues with Iran, because of the concern about oil flowing out through the Strait of Hormuz, that others will also buy oil futures, so they will buy them, too, and they will make money on the way up, and the result is, for all of us, a higher price at the pump.
So if we want to do something about oil prices, we take on the speculators. That is why in Dodd-Frank we gave the CFTC the ability to exclude speculators from that marketplace, to say they have to have positions, they have to have an end use for oil. But they haven't used that power. Maybe we need to pass a stronger bill to suppress the speculation, since the CFTC is not doing its job.

What we know for certain is that giving powerful oil companies the people's money to add to the money they are keeping in the bank, the billions they are sitting on, will not do one thing to drop the price of oil. Let's help American families and not the most powerful who have no need for these funds.

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