Stop subsidizing huge oil profits
How can oil industry executives justify billions of dollars in federal tax breaks when they made $123 billion in profits last year? Truth be told, they’re business people and they’ll take advantage of whatever is available to help the bottom line.
The real question, however, is: How can Congress defend such tax abatements, particularly at a time when consumers are paying record gasoline prices? The current practice is indefensible.
But perhaps Massachusetts Congressman Edward Markey put it best when he referred to the situation during a House debate two years ago as, “Oil companies want to play Uncle Sam for Uncle Sucker.”
Markey and other members of Congress were at it again this week with quick jabs to oil executives during a Capitol Hill hearing that focused on the industry’s astronomical profits. In recent years, such finger-pointing has become as much a spring ritual at the Capitol as the cherry blossoms.
And don’t think that the oil executives didn’t push back. They essentially gave the “don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” argument. The executives blamed oil prices on such external factors as rising demand in developing countries, the small amount of excess production capacity worldwide and the weak dollar.
Nevertheless, the federal government shouldn’t be in the position of subsidizing the oil industry’s windfall profits. The House should push ahead on legislation that would extend tax breaks for renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind projects.
The same legislation also calls for funding the alternative energy projects by eliminating the tax break currently extended to the five biggest international oil companies. Talk about windfall profits in the oil industry has gone on long enough. As gasoline prices creep toward $4 per gallon, congressional action to end this abuse is overdue.
Source: Rochester Democrat & Chronicle
Tags: fuel price, taxes