[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 62 (Tuesday, May 7, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H4434-H4435]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             OIL COMPANY MISMANAGEMENT AND GASOLINE PRICES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, the political party that once suggested that 
catsup should be counted as a vegetable in school lunch programs has 
given us a new plan to slash funding for public schools across America.
  Over the weekend the Republican majority leader suggested that 
repealing the 4-cent tax on gasoline be paid for by cutting education 
for the children in the United States. He said if there is a place 
where we are getting a declining value for an increasing dollar it is 
in education.
  That is right, the majority leader of the Republican Party wants to 
cut the education budget of our country. And to do what? Well, the 
Colombo-like, Dick Tracy-like investigations of the Republican Party 
have found that the 4-cent increase in gasoline tax in 1993 is somehow 
related to oil company executive speculation in the oil market in 1996, 
which has led to a 20-cent increase in the price of gasoline for 
consumers across this country.
  Now, you are never going to hear a word from the Republican Party 
about the oil companies increasing gasoline by 20 cents a gallon in the 
last 3 months. Not a word. They are going to keep pointing back to a 4-
cent gasoline tax in 1993 that actually led to a reduction in the price 
of oil over the next 2 years.
  Why? Well, because they want to avoid some very simple facts. Fact 
No. 1: The central reason that oil prices are rising in America is that 
the oil company executives across the board, every one of them in 1995, 
decided that they were going to lower the inventories that they kept to 
hand in order to ensure against excessive cold weather or something 
else going on well below their average for the preceding 20 years.
  Now, that is fine if it had not also been tied to a bet which they 
had, which was that Saddam Hussein would accept safeguards placed upon 
how he would use the profits from the sale of oil if the United Nations 
and the world community allowed has back into the marketplace for the 
sale of oil.
  Surprisingly, Saddam Hussein refuses to accept the safeguards, which 
would ensure that the money, the profits which he would obtain would be 
used for humanitarian purposes within his country and not for a massive 
military buildup.
  The oil company executives ran on empty. If we rode around in our 
automobile with the needle on the gas gauge down on empty and then ran 
into a traffic jam, we would blame ourselves. The oil companies ran on 
empty. There was plenty of oil in the world. The world was awash in oil 
all of last year and the beginning of this

[[Page H4435]]

year, but they decided not to go to the filing station to fill up 
because they thought they were going to go to Saddam Hussein's gas 
station.
  Mr. Speaker, any other industry in the free market, if the Cherrios 
company forgets to put aside enough Cheerios, guess what? People go and 
buy corn flakes or raisin bran and they are the loser. Not the oil 
industry. They did not, through mismanagement, put aside sufficient 
reserves, and what happens? I tell my colleagues what happens: a 41-
percent, on average, increase in profits in the last quarter for the 
oil companies. Forty-one percent profits.
  What to hear something else? Seventy-four percent profits for the 
secondary oil companies, and a 799-percent increase in profits for the 
oil drilling companies, all in the last 3 months. The last 3 months. 
The Republicans want to blame the 1993 4-cent gasoline tax for your 20- 
or 30-percent increase at the pump this year, not pointing a finger at 
the oil companies' mismanagement. That is like a Red Sox fan blaming 
the trade of Babe Ruth for the fact that we are behind 10 games in the 
pennant race this year. The Republicans should be ashamed for talking 
about cutting the education budget instead of looking at the oil 
companies, where they should.

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