Window Dressing
[Bush] said he was directing the Justice Department to join with an existing Federal Trade Commission inquiry into possible price manipulation.
.....
And he called for the reversal of relatively small tax breaks and incentives for oil companies engaging in specific types of exploration. Those perks were in an energy bill Mr. Bush signed into law last year.
The Window
While Republican leaders sharply criticize soaring gasoline prices and energy industry profits, GOP negotiators have decided to knock out provisions in a major tax bill that would force the oil companies to pay billions of dollars more in taxes on their profits.
The extent of the hypocrisy, below.
House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) made it clear yesterday that the leadership would only go so far in punishing an industry enjoying record-breaking profits if that punishment could have broader negative consequences. In January, Exxon Mobil Corp. alone reported the highest corporate profit in U.S. history: $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter of 2005 and $36.13 billion for the entire year.(emphasis added)
Punishment? Forcing the Exxon Mobile to disgorge a little of their $36 Billion in profit for last year is punishment?
What about giving taxpayers a measly $500 tax credit to defray home energy costs as proposed by Sen. Snowe?
the Bush administration has strongly opposed Snowe's measures from the start, especially the accounting change, which would hit the five major oil companies to the tune of $4.3 billion in two years.
The Bush Administration is mightily concerned about price manipulation and gouging except when they might have to actually do something about it.
In President Bush's speech he:
called for the reversal of relatively small tax breaks and incentives for oil companies engaging in specific types of exploration. Those perks were in an energy bill Mr. Bush signed into law last year.
Turns out
The tax change Bush spoke of ... is less dramatic than it may seem, oil industry tax analysts said. The Senate had hoped to repeal the quick write-off of exploration costs, but Bush merely wants to stretch it out from two years to five years, as proposed in his February budget plan, according to Mark Kibbe, senior tax policy analyst with the American Petroleum Institute.
"We would not necessarily be opposed to that at all," Kibbe said.
No, Mr. Kibbe, I don't suppose you would be opposed. Hell, you probably wrote it.
Is their an honest bone in the Republican body politic? Anywhere?