It's Time to End Tax Breaks for Big Oil
Last week, I went to the White House with my Senate Democratic colleagues to go over President Obama’s plan for reducing the debt and the deficit. I am for cuts. I am for a government that is frugal and thrifty. I voted for $78 billion in cuts for 2011 to avoid a shutdown, and I’m ready to go further.
We have a lot of tough decisions ahead of us. I am ready to make them. I want to bring troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. I want to take a serious look at the Government Accountability Office recommendations to make the government run more efficiently. One decision that’s not tough is ending lavish subsidies for oil and gas companies to save $2 billion each year. So I’m very disappointed that the Senate failed to move forward this week on an important bill that would have ended those unfair tax subsidies to the five largest oil companies.
Americans are paying $4 a gallon for gas, while the top five oil companies are getting $4 billion a year in tax breaks. And profits have skyrocketed. Exxon just reported its best quarter since 2008 with $10.7 billion in profits, and even BP saw its profits increase by 17 percent to $7.1 billion.
Yet oil production is one of the most heavily subsidized industries in the U.S. The average American pays a higher income tax rate than ExxonMobil. It isn’t fair. We can’t afford to give billions of tax dollars to pad oil companies’ pockets. The legislation would have repealed tax loopholes to BP, Exxon, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips – and used the billions in savings to help reduce the debt.
Maryland families tell me they are on the ropes. They are worried about getting a job if they don’t have one, or keeping a job if they already have one. They are worried about paying for their homes, their cars and for their kids’ college. A recent report from Citizens for Tax Justice shows that Big Oil spent most of their profits in the purchase their own stocks and boost their dividends between 2005 and 2010. Last year, four of the five largest oil companies allocated just 18 percent of their post-tax profits on exploration and 60 percent on dividends and stock repurchases. BP was the only company excluded, because of the oil spill.
And a recent study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that eliminating the subsidies would not raise gas prices.
Still, Republicans are more focused on their assault on women than restoring fiscal sanity. Instead of ending lavish subsidies to oil and gas companies, they want to turn Medicare from a guaranteed benefit for seniors into a guaranteed benefit for insurance companies. Instead of working on common-sense ways to cut the debt and deficit, they are jeopardizing women’s health at all stages of life – and throwing middle-class families under the bus.
Fighting for Lower Gas Prices
You can count on me to fight for lower gas prices and against lavish subsidies for big oil companies.
In March, I signed a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), directing it to combat risky betting on oil by Wall Street, which is often responsible for increased gas prices.
Supply and demand should determine the price of oil. Not Wall Street speculators. I'm not interested in regulations that make it easy for the sharks and whales to do business - I'm concerned about the minnows. I want regulations that protect American consumers from being gouged by big business at the gas pump.
I also helped vote down a House Republican budget proposal that would have cut the CFTC budget by $56 million, which would have made it difficult for the Commission to meet its mission to restrict oil speculation.
