Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who spouts warm and fuzzy rhetoric about small government and cutting spending,
thinks we're too tough when it comes to taxing oil companies:
Instead of punishing them, you should want to encourage them. I would think you would want to say to the oil companies, “What obstacles are there to you making more money?” And hiring more people. Instead they say, “No, we must punish them. We must tax them more to make things fair.” This whole thing about fairness is so misguided and gotten out of hand. [...] We as a society need to glorify those who make a profit.
This fairness thing certainly
has gotten out of control given the record levels of wealth and income inequality we face in Gilded Age II.
As the Center for American Progress has pointed out, every time gasoline makes a quarterly rise of one cent a gallon, it raises the quarterly profits of Big Oil—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell—by $200 million. Since Jan. 2, the average price of a gallon of gas nationwide has risen 59 cents. You can do the math.
Last year, those companies made $137 billion in profits. From 2001 through 2011, they made $1 trillion in profits.
That's why President Obama, Sen. Robert Menendez and other Democrats think it's time to trim the $4 billion in annual tax breaks the Big 5 receive even though they pay well below the 35 percent corporate income tax rate they all whine is hurting them so much. Chevron, to offer one example, paid at the 19 percent rate last year on profits of $26.9 billion. Menendez's bill S. 2204 would eliminate those tax breaks, which would effectively reduce by a few inches the hoard the Big 5 have in their petty cash drawer, now around $58 billion.
The bill would take the revenue saved by not pouring it into the vaults of companies that clearly don't need it and direct it instead into investments in clean energy. It's a smart move, the right move.
That's not, however, the kind of energy future that government should be encouraging in the view of Sen. Paul. Rather it should get out of the way of the fossil fuel giants and let them do what they do. Regulatory oversight for them should be gutted, more public lands should be opened up to them, or even better, privatized entirely, pollution rules should be relaxed or done away with. And their taxes should be lowered, but not their tax breaks.
Then, by golly, these companies can finally make some real money. And we can sing hosannas.
•••
Tell your senators to vote "Yes" to end Big Oil subsidies.