Tax Cuts

We are currently smack-dab in the middle of tax season. Understandably, the topic is on most of our minds.

Senate is currently debating a proposed bill that will roll back nearly $18 billion in tax breaks for large oil companies pushed through in 2005. The bill has already passed in Congress however, President Bush has already voiced intention to veto such a bill if it passes.

The Clean Air Act of 2007 languished in the Senate when the GOP opposed it. As the price of oil continues to climb, sentiments may be changing.

The revenues from the repeal of the breaks given to the oil companies (almost $18 billion over 10 years)would be used for tax incentives for wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

Big oil, in a second year of record breaking profits, has been busy lobbying against the bill in Congress and the Senate. It appears they’ve already won over the White House.

Shouldn't an industry, whose five biggest producers generated $145 billion in profits in 2006, be able to sacrifice $1.7 billion in annual tax breaks to help develop the cleaner fuel alternatives our country needs?

In a 2005 address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, President Bush spoke forcefully of the need for an energy strategy that looked to the long term and emphasized conservation and renewable fuels. Of the oil and gas industry, he said pointedly: “I will tell you with $55 oil we don’t need incentives to the oil and gas companies... There are plenty of incentives. What we need is to put a strategy in place that will help this country over time become less dependent.”

I would like to pose a question then: If President Bush felt this was true while the cost of crude oil was $55 a barrel, isn’t it even more valid and urgent at $100 a barrel?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/04/20050414-4.html

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/347/oil-politics.html