Windfall Profits Tax and Energy Security Trust Fund Remarks on Signing the Message to the Congress.

THE PRESIDENT. I have just signed a message to Congress asking for the passage of a windfall profits tax and the establishment of an energy security trust fund. This is one of the most important legislative proposals of my administration.

A windfall profits tax is the only thing that stands between the oil companies and a huge bonanza of unearned, unnecessary, and unjustified profits. The energy security trust fund is a bridge between the America of today, dependent on foreign oil and shot through with wasteful patterns of consumption, and the America of tomorrow, in which our technology can make us far less dependent on foreign oil.

Under this proposal, the oil industry will get $6 billion, which should be used for additional exploration for domestic oil and gas. This is a net increase, after all Federal and State taxes are paid. Oil company profits are already high, and, as you well know, they're growing rapidly.

The windfall tax revenue must go to create the energy security trust fund for the American people. This fund will help low-income Americans pay the higher energy costs that will come from decontrol. While decontrol will lessen our reliance on the foreign oil cartel, we cannot, in good conscience, place a new and a harsh burden on those who are fighting to escape poverty.

This fund will also help us to improve our mass transportation and will stimulate development of new and unconventional energy sources. We can make it economical to harness the energy of the Sun, the wind, the tides, and the geothermal power of the Earth.

Increased energy can also come, and will come, from better uses of oil shale, coal, our forests, and our streams. American innovation has given us the greatest industrial capacity on Earth. We must use our technology and our technological daring to solve our present energy problems.

The windfall profits tax will be levied not on American families, but on the oil companies, who are already awash with their greatest profits since the OPEC oil embargo.

The congressional battle over the windfall profits tax and the energy security trust fund will be a classic confrontation pitting the common and public good against the enormous power of a wellorganized special interest.

If the oil companies cannot defeat these proposals outright, they will try to gut them so they will have no meaning. This will be an excellent opportunity for the Congress to prove to a sometimes doubtful public that in such a test of political strength, the people's interests can prevail.

Abraham Lincoln once asked his Cabinet, "If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs will a dog have?" The Cabinet all responded, "Five." Abraham Lincoln said, "This is wrong. Calling a dog's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." Calling something a windfall profits tax doesn't make it one if it has the kind of loopholes that you can sail an oil tanker through.

Calling something an energy security trust fund doesn't make it one if it's just an accounting device to pump additional billions of dollars to the oil companies. The American people will not stand for that, and neither will I. That's why I intend to give the Congress my full support as it considers the details of the windfall profits tax and the energy security trust fund.

Equality and fairness demand an honest windfall profits tax. Our country needs an effective energy security trust fund. And I intend to see that we get both.

Thank you very much.

REPORTER. Mr. President, if they pass a bill with some significant plowback in it, would you veto that?

THE PRESIDENT. I will do everything I can to oppose any additional plowback, which is an allocation of money to the oil companies above what they will get, as I said just then. Under this proposal which I have submitted to Congress, the oil companies will already get, in effect, a $6 billion plowback after they pay all their Federal and State income taxes.

So, any further plowback would be a travesty, and I would oppose it to the utmost of my ability.