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Congressmembers Maurice Hinchey, Carolyn Maloney, George Miller, and Ed Markey
four Democratic Congressmembers call for hearings on alleged collusion and corruption at Department of Interior
A group of
House Democrats held a conference call today, Thursday, September 21, 2006 to announce their call for immediate congressional hearings and investigations into reported efforts by senior Interior Department officials to allow oil and gas companies to cheat American taxpayers out of royalty payments.
Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY),
Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA),
Congressman George Miller (D-CA),
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), and
Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) discussed three letters sent today to the House leadership, House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA), and House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior Chairman Charles Taylor (R-NC), asking that oversight hearings be held on the matter before Congress adjourns for October.
The Congressmembers were pursuing an issue highlighted in an article in today's
New York Times entitled
"Suits Say U.S. Impeded Audits for Oil Leases," by Edmund L. Andrews, which documents charges by present and former auditors in the U.S. Department of the Interior that this federal agency has been aggressively looking out for the financial well-being of oil companies, specifically Shell Oil and the
Kerr-McGee Corporation, rather than the interests of American taxpayers to whom these companies owe certain royalty payments for oil they've extracted from beneath "publicly owned waters in the Gulf of Mexico."
colorful language from Members of Congress
Following up on recent extreme language from heads of government including Evo Morales of Bolivia, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran in their addresses to the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, these Democratic Members of Congress, not unreasonably frustrated by years of struggle on what U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton has famously referred to as a "plantation" oppressively dominated by a Republican majority, and noticeably incensed by what they see as "collusion" and "corruption" on the part of that majority, used strong language in calling for hearings and denouncing the Republicans with the power to hold, or not hold, such an inquiry.
New York Congressman Maurice Hinchey claimed during the Democrats' phone-in press conference that the "Department of the Interior is in bed with the oil companies" within a "system of corruption."
California Congressman George Miller, ranking Democrat on the House Resources Committee, said that "the Federal Government is in collusion with the oil companies" and that while there has been a long-standing "pattern of corruption among oil companies" in trying to avoid royalty payments, what was new now was that that corruption could now be found "among the people in the Department of the Interior."
Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey attacked what he called the "Bush Administration's cozy co-operation with the oil companies" and a process that countenanced "corrupt, gross underpayment" of royalties due the U.S. Government.
New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney said that the auditors whose claims were featured in the Times article cited above were "rebelling over Department of Interior negligence" and that the Bush Department of Interior was giving the oil companies in question "free rein to cheat the taxpayers," while "actively seeking to silence its auditors."
listen to the Hinchey-Maloney-Markey-Miller phone-in press conference calling for hearings on alleged Interior Department misconduct regarding oil royalties
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