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One Minute Remarks on Oil Prices
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA)
Remarks
House of Representatives
June 19, 2008

Madam Speaker:

I think I’ve walked into a meeting of the Republican drilling caucus. If they remember history, they'll remember that Mr. Cheney had a meeting at the White House in 2001, had all the oil company executives in, it was a secret meeting, we have yet to find out who was there, but we can now, eight years later, see the agenda. Create chaos in the Middle East, attack Iraq, destabilize the oil fields, threaten Iran, let's drive up the price of oil.

Gasoline was $1.47 when George Bush took control. Here we are, it's $4; they have absolutely succeeded. Now the end of that meeting, they said, and for really the best part of this is, we're going to get the right to drill in ANWR. Let’s blame the environmentalists; they won't let us build refineries. The reason we don't build refineries is because oil companies don't want to follow the rules. The only thing they drilled a hole in is the bottom of the economic boat in this country.