[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 71 (Monday, May 20, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5296-H5297]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                GAS TAX

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Laughlin). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey] 
is recognized for 15 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, first I would like to point out how much in 
agreement I am with the statements of the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. 
Wolf] and the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi] on the issues of 
China and the extent to which they stand in contempt of the values 
which this country hold so dear.
  There use of slave labor in their country to undercut the prices of 
goods that are then sold in this country and others around the world is 
reprehensible. Their sale of nuclear materials to Pakistan and into the 
Middle East is also reprehensible and will ultimately come back to harm 
us and harm other countries in the world.
  Their pirating of goods from our country, software, intellectual 
property, while only at the beginning, is going to finally wind up 
hurting us in the one area which we believe this country should be in 
the lead in terms of ensuring that we are guaranteeing each child the 
opportunity to work in these high end skill areas in computers, in 
software, in telecommunications. These are not areas where we should 
allow the Chinese to take our intellectual property. What they have 
done in Taiwan, what they have done in other areas of their foreign 
policy, all of its is absolutely unacceptable. I hope that the wisdom 
of Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Wolf are heard here on the floor of Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise at this time, however, on a different subject. 
This week, the House will vote on the 4.3-cent gas tax repeal. This is 
perhaps the most unnecessary, most misguided legislative back flip of 
the 104th Congress. President Clinton already acted to break the oil 
price spiral of this spring by moving against the wishes of the oil 
industry to speed up the sale of the 12 million barrels of oil from the 
strategic petroleum reserve.
  He has also wisely initiated an investigation into the true causes of 
the 20- to 40-cent increase that some motorists have been forced to pay 
at the gas pump in March and April and May. And now, just today, Saddam 
Hussein has finally accepted the demands of the United Nations for 
allowing him to sell Iraqi oil on the world market. Oil prices may not 
finally come down from their 6-year highs, but we have just begun 
pumping up the hype over cutting the gas tax.
  Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the Republican rhetoric will soar. Never mind 
that most economists say that this 4-cent cut will go right into the 
pockets of, you guessed it, the oil companies, Even the oil companies 
themselves have conceded that they are unlikely to pass this tax 
through to consumers. They intend to keep it, plain and simple. And 
there is nothing in the package we will vote on tomorrow to prevent the 
outrageous outcome.
  I asked the Rules Committee for an amendment to fix this diversion of 
the tax cut to the oil companies, but the Rules Committee has prevented 
me from offering that alternative.
  Mr. Speaker, I had a quite simple amendment for this body. If you own 
a car, all you have to do is just check off

[[Page H5297]]

on your tax form next year that you own a car and get back 30 bucks. 
The average American drives 12,000 miles a year. As a result, at 20 
miles to a gallon on average, that is 600 gallons. You multiply the 600 
gallons by 4.37 cents, and you get about 30 bucks. That is what this 
whole debate is about, by the way, 30 bucks.

  The simplest way of making sure that the American taxpayer gets it 
back is just putting it right on the tax form. If we are going to give 
a tax cut, why would we give it to the oil companies and ask them to 
perhaps at the pump at some point in the future to see, pretty please, 
if they would pass it on to the consumer when we can just put it as a 
line on the tax form? And that way the taxpayer gets it back guaranteed 
if they own a car and they check it off on the form.
  But, no, the Republicans refused to allow that to be made in order as 
an amendment so that we can make sure that it is the consumer and not 
the oil companies who get this tax break.
  Now, my constituents are appalled that Congress would respond to 
soaring gas prices by sending a rebate to the oil companies. They just 
do not trust the oil companies and neither should you. Just this 
weekend a preliminary study from the Interior Department uncovered a 
royalty ripoff by the oil companies of over $850 million owed but not 
paid to the Federal Government, to the Federal taxpayers. Why should we 
rebate the gas tax to these deadbeat drillers who raise gas prices?
  Mr. Speaker, if the Interior Department investigation of the royalty 
ripoff found $850 million in overcharges, what will the Department of 
Energy investigation of the gas price rip-off find? Well, guess what. 
The Republicans are proposing to pay for the gas tax by taking it from 
the Department of Energy. That is right, they are cutting $600 million 
from the very agency which is investigating the gas price ripoff. Looks 
like they want to call off the DOE bloodhounds before they catch up 
with the oil companies. Not since Hogan's Heroes have we had so many 
Sergeant Schultz characters averting their eyes from wrongdoing while 
chanting ``I hear nothing, I see nothing.'' This is the response which 
we get from the Republican side. But the American people can see it 
more clearly.
  Gas prices go up, oil company profits have gone up. The pay of oil 
company executives in the last 60 days has been soaring. The top 30 
executives at the biggest 6 oil companies have seen their incomes 
increase on an average of $700,000 just for those 60 days. 
Investigations of the oil companies get curtailed. Deadbeat drillers do 
not pay royalties. Congress cuts a tax that has nothing to do with the 
increases, allowing the industry to make even more.
  Let us defeat this unfair rule on the gas tax repeal so that we can 
amend the bill to ensure that all of the savings are passed on to the 
consumer. That is, after all, the entire intent of this exercise, to 
make sure every driver, every owner of every automobile gets back the 
$30 that the 4 cents a year per gallon represents.
  Now, how did we get into this mess? Well, as all consumers know, 
their oil prices have gone up at the gas pump 20 to 40 cents a gallon 
in 1996. But the Republicans and the oil companies, they keep pointing 
back to a 4.3-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax in 1993. Why do they not have 
the hearings? Why do we not have the investigation into why gas prices 
went up this year 20 to 40 cents? We know it had nothing to do with 
that gas tax in 1993. What did it have anything to do with? Well, it 
had everything to do with the issue of the oil companies keeping their 
inventories at historic lows. What had happened was, they bet, the oil 
companies, that Saddam Hussein would be allowed to sell 2 billion 
dollars' worth of oil each 6 months into the global economy. As a 
result, what they did was they took their oil stocks that they keep 
here in the United States, and they reduced them down to 100 million 
barrels a day below where they historically had had them.

  In other words, like a reckless driver on a bet, the industry simply 
drove with the needle on empty, passing right by any number of global 
filling stations that were, by the way, awash with oil all last year in 
this, in a foolish attempt to buy cheap from a terrorist who wanted to 
sell oil to get money to buy guns, and he would not accept any 
restrictions upon the sale of that oil in terms of where the profits 
would go.
  Of course, the oil companies are not gambling with their own money. 
They are gambling with your money. In a free market, the oil industry 
would be punished for this outrageous behavior by consumers switching 
to other fuels. But cars cannot be switched overnight to alternatives. 
So instead of being punished, this inelastic market rewards the 
negligent parties with higher prices at the pump and higher profits in 
the board room.
  In fact, the personal compensation of oil executives has gone up 
nearly as fast as the price of gasoline. As I have said, oil company 
stock, executive stock options rose $33 million in just the last 60 
days for the top five executives in the six largest oil companies. They 
must be crying all the way to the bank.
  Mr. Speaker, in the meantime, we have absolutely no response from the 
Republicans in terms of conducting the hearings that are necessary to 
find out exactly what did happen. If they did, we would be putting the 
moral pressure, which we should, upon these oil companies to keep 
inventory high. We sent 500,000 American men and women to the Persian 
Gulf in 1991, not to prop up a nascent democracy in Kuwait. No, we did 
it in order to ensure that the oil supply would come to our country.
  The oil companies should not be under price controls, but they should 
have a moral responsibility to every other industry in this country, to 
every consumer in this country to keep their tanks filled in case 
Saddam Hussein or any other dictator in this world decides to play 
games with our oil marketplace. That is all we ask from them in return 
for the deployment of 500,000 men and women in 1991, billions of 
dollars on a yearly basis to keep the oil lines open into our country. 
If the store runs out of Cheerios, you buy corn flakes. If they do not 
have orange juice, you buy grapefruit juice. But if there is no 
gasoline, there is nothing else you can put in your tank and they know 
it.
  The oil companies have no right to conduct themselves in that way, 
oblivious to the impact it has on our entire economy. That is why oil 
prices went up 20 to 40 cents at the pump. And that is why this whole 
debate over the 4.3-cent gas tax in 1993 is a political diversionary 
tactic by the Republicans intended to ensure that there would be no 
inspection of what the oil company responsibility is to our country.
  So I ask once again for the Republican leadership to give us the 
opportunity to put in order an amendment which will ensure that the tax 
break will go directly to the consumers. Under their formulation, it 
goes to the oil companies. Out of all industries in this country after 
the last 6 months with their spike, with the spike in the prices that 
they are able to charge for this one good that goes in every gasoline 
tank in our country, we should ensure that it does not go into their 
pockets.
  So that is why I rise, Mr. Speaker, and I would hope that my 
colleagues tomorrow would defeat the rule, which denies us the ability 
of ensuring that this tax break goes directly to consumers.

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