The Christian Science Monitor has an article focused on the efforts afoot in the U.S. House of Representatives to cut federal subsidies and tax breaks to oil companies by about $14 billion over the next 10 years and redirect those subsidies to renewable energy.
What’s really good about the article is that it digs in and explains the tax breaks and subsidies currently given to the oil company — citing a figure of about $3.5 billion for the year 2005. That strikes me as a bit obscene given the huge profits realized by the oil companies in the past few years. For example, Exxon enjoyed a 4th quarter profit of $10.71 billion.
[tags]oil, energy, taxation[/tags]
I think the Government should stop subsidizing any number of things; oil is just one example.
Do you know how much the Federal government spends to subsidize farmers?
With the Earned Income Tax Credit do you know how money money the government spends to subsidize the poor?
Do you know how much money the government spent subsidizing the tobacco industry (While at the same time suing them?)
The list goes on and on.
We need to stop most government subsidies and let the free market rein…
MIke Sylvester
Sure, we’ll cut the tax breaks we give to domestic oil companies – upsetting the status quo and current domestic price, thereby makinig domestic oil more expensive, and thereby increasing dependence on foreign sources. Wonderful logic. But of, course by their very nature, Big Oil is eeeeeevil.
The Democrats never had a problem with gas being $3 a gallon. They had a problem that a company in a capitalist country had the audacity to make a (huge) profit. This is the Democrats at their prime – cut tax breaks for business that actually employ people and pump money back into the economy – remember, Exxon and Halliburton aren’t just sitting on piles of money. They reinvest and expand – and then we’ll probably spend the resultant tax income on some useless social program that does no-one but the people who get the checks any good.
How do you figure oil companies are working in a free market when their product is being subsidized to such a huge degree? How could alternate energies ever thrive against that kind of competition?
Inquiring minds want a coherent response to Doug’s questions.