(Washington D.C.)- U.S. Rep. Sander Levin (D-Royal Oak), today made the following floor statement in support of closing $5.4 billion in unjustified tax breaks for large oil companies.

Mr. Levin's remarks are below:

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the motion by Representative LARSON that calls for rolling back $5.4 billion in unjustified tax subsidies and loopholes for the oil industry.  The Senate has voted to close these loopholes, and the House should do the same.  We are here to represent the interests of American consumers, not the interests of the oil companies.

The average U.S. price for self-serve regular gas is $2.91 a gallon, or nearly 70 cents higher than it was at this time last year.  This is the average cost.  In many areas, the price of a gallon of gas is much higher.  Some of this is due to higher oil prices and strong demand for petroleum, but some of the price hikes we are seeing simply cannot be explained away by supply and demand.

At the same time that consumers are facing pain at the pump, the oil companies are raking in record profits.  Last week, the world's largest oil company, Exxon Mobil Corp., announced first-quarter profits of $8.4 billion, up 7 percent from a year ago.  This gave Exxon the fifth-highest quarterly profits ever recorded by a publicly-traded company.  Marathon Oil's profits more than doubled in the first quarter to $784 million.  ConocoPhillips, the Nation's third-largest oil and gas producer, reported last week that its first quarter profit rose 13 percent.  All told, the country's three largest U.S. petroleum companies posted combined first-quarter income of almost $16 billion, an increase of 17 percent from the year before.

Further, Exxon Mobil recently was able to give its former CEO one of the most generous retirement packages in history: nearly $400 million, including pension, stock options and other perks.  The people I represent simply do not understand how the energy companies can keep posting sky-high profits, award $400 million golden parachutes to their executives, and keep raising the price of gasoline.

The very least Congress can do is to close some of the unjustified loopholes in the tax code that unfairly benefit big oil companies.  Americans are watching what we are doing here.  I am sure they noticed a plan floated by Senate Republicans last Friday to give consumers a $100 rebate check, paid for by a tax change on oil company inventory accounting.  For most people, that would come out to about two or three tanks of gas.  Consumers want us to fix the problem, not buy them off with a $100 check.  But what's interesting here is how the proponents of the rebate plan quickly shelved their proposal just a few days later after oil companies waged an intense lobbying effort to block the closure of the inventory accounting loophole.  This speaks volumes about who the Republican leaders of Congress listen to.

The motion before the House would roll back $5.4 billion over 10 years in tax subsidies and loopholes for the oil industry.  That comes out to about $135 million a quarter, which comes out to be about 1.6 percent of Exxon's first-quarter earnings in 2006.

So there is a clear choice before the House today.  We can stand with consumers who are struggling with these sky-high gas prices, or we can stand with the oil companies that are posting some of the highest profits in the history of the world. 

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