[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2796-2797]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         CONGRESS CHOSE POORLY

  (Mr. POE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)

[[Page 2797]]


  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, if you tax something, you get less of it. If 
you subsidize it, you get more of it. So in this day of homegrown 
energy depletion, Congress made the absurd choice of putting more taxes 
on American oil companies and, instead, chose to subsidize the special 
interest groups of unproven, undeveloped, and even nonexistent sources 
of energy.
  More taxes means the price of crude oil will rise, not diminish; 
thus, gasoline prices will rise. This tax will be passed on to us, the 
consumer. Taxes are always passed on to the consumer.
  The tax will not encourage, but lessen, domestic oil production. The 
tax will encourage oil companies to go to some other country to drill 
for oil and encourage American refineries to move offshore to areas not 
hostile.
  The tax will make us more dependent on Third World countries like 
Dictator Chavez for oil.
  Congress should lower taxes on U.S. oil companies to encourage 
domestic production.
  So Congress had the choice to encourage domestic oil production by 
opening up places to drill like ANWR and off the coast, or to tax the 
black gold and lifeblood of our energy--crude oil. Congress chose 
poorly.
  And that's just the way it is.

                          ____________________