The Senate vote to advance Sen. Bob Menendez's bill to end Big Oil subsidies is coming up, so
now is our chance to weigh in.
Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid
set up a cloture vote for it, scheduled for tomorrow.
Republicans believe the floor debate on the legislation will benefit them politically, amid growing public concern about prices at the pump. The GOP bashed the bill this week, alleging it would burden the oil industry and potentially raise gas prices.
“Why we’d have a bill on the floor that would raise gasoline prices, I have no idea,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said Tuesday. “But that’s the bill on the floor.”
Democrats countered that oil companies don’t need the tax breaks at a time when they’re making massive profits, painting Republicans as pawns of Big Oil.
"Senate Republicans will never side with American taxpayers against Big Oil," Reid said earlier Tuesday. "It’s against their nature."
Republicans will couch this as "taxing the job creators!" which is mean. No,
seriously, it's mean and it's picking on these poor, beleaguered companies. The great populist Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) actually argued that instead of taxing the oil companies (oh, excuse me, "energy producers") we should be asking them “What obstacles are there to you making more money?”
The Big 5 oil companies—BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips—made $1 trillion in profits from 2001 to 2011. They made $137 billion last year alone, while average Americans struggled to pay higher and higher energy costs. Last year, just as one example, Chevron paid at the 19 percent rate last year on profits of $26.9 billion.
The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that removing these oil company tax breaks would raise $24 billion over 10 years. About half of the savings, $11.7 would be used to extend important clean energy tax incentives. The rest would be slated for debt reduction (because you know how important debt reduction is to Republicans!)
It's about time the federal government stop subsidizing an industry that is making obscene profits.
Tell your Senators to vote "Yes" to end Big Oil subsidies.