Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANDRY. Mr. Chairman, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle should listen to this story. It's a true life story very well. It talks about the face of Big Oil, and I'm going to tell you what it is.

There's a little community in my district named Coteau Holmes which has been around since the Cajuns were kicked out of Acadian and settled down into Louisiana. It's a fishing village. There's a gentleman down there who graduated high school in 1968 and began to work in the oil and gas industry, and for 30 years, he worked in the oil and gas industry. He raised two children in that oil and gas industry, never asked the government for anything other than to ply his trade.

The experience he gained in the Gulf of Mexico led him to work on the first Deepwater projects in the Gulf of Mexico. He worked for Shell Oil and Gas--Big Oil--and guess what. When he retired, he was making in excess of $1,750 a day. He put two kids through college.

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Mr. LANDRY. If this is not the American Dream that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle claim to tout so much, what is? This is a gentleman who doesn't have a college education. Who actually his children were the first generation in his entire family ancestry to ever make it to college, and he could not have paid for them to go to college if not for the opportunity to drill in the Gulf of Mexico.

My colleagues should understand that down there we create jobs. We create good-paying jobs, not minimum-wage jobs, the type of jobs that provide for the American family and allow the American Dream to be a reality.

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Mr. LANDRY. Mr. Chairman, I do. I live on the coast. I represent most of coastal Louisiana. And what I wonder is, where were my colleagues in 2008? I was not in this body; they were.

They were worried about my shrimpers? In 2008, almost every shrimp boat from Venice to Delcambre was at the dock. Why? Because they had run diesel to just about $5 a gallon. You see, it takes energy for those shrimpers to go out there on the Gulf of Mexico.

They worry about the tourism in Florida? There are already multiple articles in the paper that say that high gas prices are killing tourism in Florida.

This is a responsibility bill. You see, they want to punish those who make a profit while they give taxpayer money to those who fail, who are too big to fail. They punish the companies who make profits in this country while they give our money to those who fail to make a profit.

It amazes me, because what really matters here, what really creates jobs not only in my district but in everyone else's district is affordable energy. Affordable energy is what powers the U.S. economy.

If they want to bring the profits of those four Big Oil companies down, they should vote for this bill. Because when we drive the price of oil down and when we drive the price at the pump down, we are going to drive those profits down and we are going to take away our dependency on those foreign countries that are making way more profits than those private companies.

So I urge my colleagues to remember that the responsible thing to do is to vote for this bill so that we can bring the price at the pump down.

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