he decided to get rid of doug hampton out of his office. so all the subsequent violations, the $96,000 severance payment that john just referred to, we re talking about the conspiracy to violate the cooling-off period, and the lobbying in violation of that one-year cooling-off period, all of that flowed from the the decision from ensign to eject doug hampton from his office and his employ. of course, john, there s other issue of hypocrisy. he said during the clinton affair with lewinsky, that it was an embarrassing moment for the company and clinton has no credibility left. how much credibility does he have left, now that he s been run out of the senate, and he pretended he was leaving, you know, because it was his decision, but he had to know they were coming for him here, and this appears to be worse than the clinton case, because again, as we talked about, some significant criminal possibility here. well, john ensign has
get the taxes for it. everybody comes out ahead. that s nonsense. consumers gets lower prices, the government gets more taxes, and the companies make more oil. john, they ve made $74 billion in profits last year. gist this conveyor they made over $30 billion in profits. it s not like they aren t making profits. their costs are incredibly low. so they have all the incentive in the world in the free market to drill, baby, drill, and they can drill all over the place. why should we not tax them at a reasonable rate where they don t right now they re playing less than the average middle-class guy in the street? this is a 90-year-old problem. so let s solve it. they subsidies go back 90
punish five companies, they re going to push back. i would have pushed back. it s not the money or the subsidies. it s the process. how do we make a deal where everyone can win? john, i agree with you when you say you don t need the subsidies back then. when you say they re singling out the top five, you lose me entirely. it s not that you re wrong about that, but if you said hey, let s take do you the subsidies for the oil companies, i m going to do the deal in one second flat. is the entire republican parties is in the tank for these guys.รง if i can get the republicans to cut all the oil subsidies, i would is do that in a second. they won t make a deal because their boss is oil companies? i think it s 50% republican, 50% democrats. no way, john, that s not right. the democrats refuse they ve
look at this. 1970. 9 million-barrels a day 1986, 9 million. declining slope all the way to 2008. we lost nearly 43% of the total production. joining me now to make sense of this, former shell oil president mr. john hoffmeister. we had the energy secretary steven chu tell us $8 gasoline is a good thing to get us off the dependence on oil. we have mr. bromwitch running the minerals management service and he has no idea the production in the gulf. what is with the obama administration? is it selective fuzzy math? what are they up to? when i retired from shell, the last thing i said to the board of directors in london was look. we probably going to have a different president, who will be anti-hydro-carbon. the anti-hydrocarbon president will make sure cost in the u.s. go up for the hydrocarbon
not service jobs with no benefit. but we can t get the administration and the democrats in the senate are more worried about tax breaks than the consumer price at the pump. eric: jobs go up, price of fuel goes. jobs go up and price of fuel goes down. eric: everybody around here when i walked in the room said what is going on with the price of gas? i said don t take my word for it. it set it up for three years but take john hoffmeister s word for it. price of fuel? this summer it will be around where it is now because there are uncertainties out there and geo-politics but that could change any day. $5 next year. i said six months ago, we are looking at $5 gasoline when we go to polls in 2012. as sure as we re sitting here. eric: quickly, the mighty mississippi river is cresting now. if it floods and overflows, there are refineries in the path of the water. will it impact higher prices? from baton rouge to new