Ben Adler at Grist writes—
Even as House descends into chaos, it manages to do big favor for Big Oil:
You thought the House of Representatives was mired in dysfunction, unable to find anyone competent to accept the miserable burden of serving as speaker and corralling the truculent Tea Party caucus. You heard that congressional Republicans are hopelessly divided between their mainstream and far-right wings, incapable of keeping the government running and now descending into total chaos.
Well, it turns out the House is working just fine and Republicans have found one thing they can all agree upon: deregulating the oil industry. Of course, the particular action they’ve just taken serves no purpose other than to fatten a few oil companies’ bottom lines.
On Friday, the House passed, on a 261 to 159 vote, a bill to end the ban on exporting crude oil. (Twenty-six Democrats joined with virtually all Republicans in supporting it.) This is an idea that has been growing in popularity among Republicans and a handful of oil-state Democrats over the last few years, since the shale oil boom has dramatically expanded domestic oil production. Oil companies have been lobbying aggressively for it.
If the ban were lifted, it would be bad news for the environment. As I explained last year:
The bigger profits to be gained from exporting crude oil would incentivize companies to drill more in the U.S. That means more oil contamination of our domestic environment — see, for example, the increasingly frequent oil-hauling train explosions — and more CO2 emissions when that oil is inevitably burned. [...] |
Forcing oil companies to refine their crude oil into gasoline on U.S. soil before exporting it is not an efficient way of combatting climate change. If we had a strong mechanism in place to phase out oil usage, like a suitably high global carbon tax, then a ban on exports would be a lousy policy. But in the absence of a carbon tax, it is best to restrict fossil fuel development through any means possible. That means we should keep the crude oil export ban in place. Repealing it is just a giveaway to oil companies that would hurt the climate and the broader environment.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—What the Fiscal Commission is supposed to be doing:
For the record, the so-called Fiscal Commission, which we've renamed the Catfood Commission, was established with this mission.
President Obama created the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to address our nation's fiscal challenges. The Commission is charged with identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run. Specifically, the Commission shall propose recommendations designed to balance the budget, excluding interest payments on the debt, by 2015. In addition, the Commission shall propose recommendations that meaningfully improve the long-run fiscal outlook, including changes to address the growth of entitlement spending and the gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal Government. |
It was not formed to "look at changes in Social Security," at least not ostensibly. Given the skewed nature of the commission—weighted conservative commissioners who have a history of promoting cuts to Social Security, as well as benefits cuts-happy Dems like Alice Rivlin, the story that has emerged from the commission is that it's all about Social Security.
Since Republicans on it are not only refusing to increase taxes, they're demanding more tax cuts, there's really not much else for them to discuss except Social Security. But there was a reason why this wasn't created as a Social Security commission—because Social Security didn't create the deficit and even gutting it won't solve the financial mess the country is in.
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