O'Reily's main claim throughout the interview is that the market demand and supply is to blame for high prices, not Big Oil companies. This seems an unlikely fact based on the "record profits "the oil companies have had.
O'Reilly: We're investing those record profits.
Blitzer: But billions and billions of dollars in profits, more than ever before.
O'Reilly: Yes, but it's a big business. And on a return-on-sales business, we're right in there with the average of American business today. What we're doing is investing that money. For example, last year, we did make a lot of money, $18.7 billion. This year, our capital investment in new supplies is $22.9 billion, almost $23 billion.
O'Reily admits that they have record profits but he doesn't connect those profits to our wallets. The argument for the lack in supply but high demand for oil does not explain how those record profits were reached this year. What does explain those profits is the ridiculous prices that companies are charging customers who are getting sick and tired of the extreme prices.
Blitzer then moves on to ask what O'Reily thinks of Barack's windfall profit tax that he wants to charge to oil companies and his opinion about it taking place. O'Reily immediately responds with an almost desperate answer in which he gives reasons on why that is a bad idea for oil companies.
He begins by complaining that oil companies are already heavily taxed compared to other industries. This larger tax rate is obviously not affecting the companies enough considering their record profits this year.
Second, O'Reily claims that taxing them will take away the "investments" and cause the " opposite effect of helping the problem that you have referred to." What exactly are the investments for? O'Reily keeps that answer to himself as he talks very generally about those investments. For all we know, those investments can just be towards their pocketbooks. In that case, we don't really care about their investments; we care about gas prices.
Thirdly, O'Reily states that they've been taxed with windfall profit taxes before and it caused a shortage of domestic supply and an increase in dependence on imported oil. This may be true but will taxes really cause a shortage of domestic oil? No.
Given these reasons, Blitz again asks O'Reily who he would rather be elected President, Obama who wants to implement the windfall, or McCain, who supports offshore drilling which will supposedly increase supply of crude oil. O'Reily gives a shady answer by not really straightout saying he wants McCain but he does say, " opposite effect of helping the problem that you have referred to." According to his earlier reasons concerning his reasons against windfall profit tax, O'Reily clearly did not want them, but why doesn't he admit that he would rather have McCain elected President if that would benefit his company more? Maybe it's because most people are already upset at companies like Chevron for gas prices and he would like to avoid upsetting a presidential nominee?
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