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If we cannot end subsidies to the five most profitable corporations in the history of our planet, then I don’t know how Congress will make the truly difficult decisions about how to reduce the deficit.Every year, billions of our tax dollars are given away to companies that made $36 billion in profits during this year's first quarter alone. It’s a practice that must stop. That money could be used to pay down our deficit.A proposal I announced last week will take away $2 billion in annual taxpayer-provided subsidies from the five biggest oil companies and apply every dime to reducing the deficit. It is the essence of low-hanging fruit. This is the kind of idea that should receive unanimous support in the Senate. It’s common sense.The big oil companies don’t need the money. Over the last ten years, they've raked in nearly $1 trillion – that’s $1,000,000,000,000 -- in profits. They've broken their own records for the most profitable quarter in economic history several times.
My response:
OK, once you get past the fact that they're not really subsidies...I can forgive that lie for the sake of argument. I love the idea of doing something to make gasoline prices higher! Doesn't everybody? But I don't mind eliminating these tax deductions, as long as we eliminate the HUNDREDS of billions of dollars worth of subsidies for ethanol, wind, and solar, which are nothing but massive boondoggles for programs that would never be able to compete in a free market, simply because they cannot live up to their claims.
The profits "Big Oil" makes are no different, percentage-wise, than most other companies. Some companies, such as Apple, have much higher profit margins. Why aren't you demonizing them? Why aren't you going after their tax deductions? What do these oil companies do with their profits? Do the executives just fill rooms up with cash and roll around in it, like Scrooge McDuck? No, those profits are used for future exploration and as a safety net for when bad times come--and anyone who lived through the early '80s in the oil industry can tell you, they DO come. The oil exploration and refining business is expensive. You might have read an article published this week in the Houston Chronicle about Shell's new liquid natural gas drilling and processing platform. Just building this rig is going to cost them $10 to $12 billion. That's just one rig.If two or four billion dollars really concerns you, you could start by eliminating the massively failing organizations created by Jimmy Carter--namely, the Departments of Education and Energy. But it's not really about saving money, is it? It's about punishing the companies that provide us with our country's very lifeblood.
I'm sure it'll go straight into the "Deleted Mail" folder.
