An End to Subsidies for Big Oil?
Every once in a while I hear something from Washington D.C. that provides a ray of hope that perhaps a bit of sanity may eventually prevail in the U.S. energy policy. Obama sure has disappointed a bunch of people in the last couple of years – especially the people who voted for him — but here’s something he said the other day:
Does anyone really think that Congress should give them another $4 billion dollars this year? Of course not. It’s outrageous. It’s inexcusable. And I’m asking Congress: Eliminate this oil industry giveaway right away. I want them to vote on this in the next few weeks. Let’s put every single member of Congress on record. You can stand with the oil companies or you can stand up for the American people. You can keep subsidizing a fossil fuel that’s been getting taxpayer dollars for a century or you can place your bets on a clean energy future.
Btw, it’s FAR more than $4 billion when you add them all up.
In any case, as they say, hope springs eternal.
For sure 4 Billion is an understatement, or more likely a compromise. I want to see that it actually happens not just in Press. Line items have been moved before, The accountability for every Congressman was my exact words to him in my letter. Now lets hold those numbers & Names to the fire. We need more investigative reporters exposing the full picture as if it was as important as SEX. Every dollar to Big Oil needs to be considered as lewd sex with a same sex minor in a church on sunday! That might help expose this debauchery.
Greg Chick
Only rarely should an industry be subsidized. Sometimes, but rarely, subsidizing a new industry can be justified, but the oil industry is not exactly new; it’s been around for well over a century and ceertainly is not poor.
This is another cheap shot at the ‘bad boy’ Oil industry.
Little more than popular sounding rhetoric. In fact, very few ‘subsidies’ still exist in the Oil industry.
Those that do, are old subsidies, usually involving small scale production. A careful analysis of these so-called “subsidies’,discovers they fall into the category of tax deductible items.
The administration can abolish these deductions, and the industry will simply rearrange it’s tax reporting to compensate.
In the meantime, the President is attempting to fool electors with an “old soft shoe shuffle”. The idea is that somehow the ‘oil industry’ will pay more without passing any increase in the cost of doing business, on to the consumer.
The first hit by such a measure will be the poor. The poor have the least protection from rising prices. The second is the US retirement and health funds who relay on Oil industry profits to provide incomes and services. Third is agriculture, etc..
But, such is the irrational animosity toward Oil companies, that Obama can probably gain enough votes from those who don’t understand the workings of an interdependent economy, to glide past the election, and then quietly drop the whole idea.