Senate props aplenty
WASHINGTON — The hearing was for verbally flogging oil company CEOs, and no senator bothered to pretend it was about making gasoline prices more affordable or helping the economy recover. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch set the tone Thursday when he opened with a portrait of a dog sitting on a pony.
Sen. Charles Schumer countered with a reference to a unicorn. Sen. Pat Roberts suggested a rhinoceros. It was a fit opening for a show where the oil executives served as props for politicians needing to show voters that they, too, are angry about $4 a gallon gasoline.
“This is not going to change the price at the gas pump,” Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said.
“I grant you,” the Montana Democrat added, “we’ve got to develop an energy policy in this country.”
The hearing didn’t get Congress any closer to doing that. But it did provide Senate Democrats a televised chance to challenge the nation’s five largest oil companies to defend their generous tax breaks amid huge profits. At issue, Democrats said, was a bill by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., to repeal the tax breaks granted to the five companies testifying.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon played a video of a 2005 congressional hearing in which oil company executives said they didn’t need generous tax breaks because oil was then selling at $55 a barrel. Now it is just below $100.
“You all said you didn’t need them in 2005,” Wyden said. “You seem to be telling a different story today.”
