In March, the entire House Republican Caucus voted to protect oil subsidies, which total $40 billion over 10 years. Now, it appears that numerous Republicansare questioning the wisdom of those subsidies, especially with high gas prices and soaring profits for oil companies. ThinkProgress has the story.
One such congressman is Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL). ThinkProgress spoke with Webster prior to hisraucous town hall meeting yesterday and asked him about whether he’d like to see oil subsidies ended, as House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) initially called for and then later backtracked. Webster was unequivocal in his support for ending subsidies to oil companies, saying that further cutting “any kind of corporate welfare is on the table”:
KEYES: Yesterday, Speaker Boehner came out and said that oil companies ought to be paying their fair share in order to close down this debt. Is that something you would join him in? Would you like to see those subsidies ended?
WEBSTER: The Ryan plan includes tax reform and it includes lowering of corporate taxes, but also spreading out the base so those who are not paying are paying. So that’s already included in the plan. I think he was only saying in a specific manner what that plan already does.
KEYES: So you’d like to see those subsidies to oil companies ended?
WEBSTER: Yes, any kind of corporate welfare is on the table, right now. For sure.
Watch it:
As laudable as Webster’s call for an end to corporate welfare is, the fact remains that he joined every single House Republican in voting to protect subsidies for oil companies. Still, as oil companies rack up extraordinary profits, more GOPers like Webster might be reconsidering whether the government ought to continue doling out oil subsidies.
– A ThinkProgress repost.
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I can see the beginnings of a “green tea” alliance sprouting up at the grassroots as well, with farmers and ranchers wanting to grow a crop of solar panels. After all, if we are paying people not to grow stuff, why not put that idled land to work.
Real grassroots tea partiers are the types that want to go off the grid, that mistrust big corporations as much as big government.
They are just at the point of realizing their leaders, like ours, are totally beholden to the corporations.
I’d also like to point out something very important happening – the I matter youth march around the world ( http://www.imattermarch.org ) culminating in a May 14 bevent in Denver. I believe we will be seeing a grassroots revolution on the scale of the civil rights, nuclear disarmament, and forest protection movements combined.
I see his remarks differently. “On the table” is a hell of a lot different from “needed”. When it gets to the table, the oil companies will slip money to members of Congress- on the table, and under it.
Hypocrites or frauds…take your pick. I believe that the election of 2012 is going to prove that GOP overreach had consequences and was just too much for the majority of independents. I’ve not met anyone who believes that the ‘house’ has done anything to improve the country, but they’ve certainly practiced partisan politics.
“Willing to look at” and “on the table” does not mean ending oil subsidies.
Their main goal remains cutting taxes for the wealthy even more, ending more programs, and putting more pressure on Social Security and Medicare.
Plus, did you note that they want to raise income taxes on the “lucky duckies” (their term), i.e. those whose income is too low to pay federal income tax?
Taxing the rich is fair, efficient, and balances budgets. It also helps blunt the drill-baby-drill and burn-baby-burn message. Taxing the rich is politically crucial.
Of course Mike Roddy #2 is correct. The market capitalist crony capitalist plutocratic kleptocracy that rules the planet is immune to ‘Damascene’ conversions. It is set, by dint of its defining parameters and motivations and its ideological beliefs, held as firmly as any religious revelation, on only one course. Profit maximisation, capital accumulation and andless growth of elite wealth, even at the cost of impoverishing billions and destroying the planet’s biospheres. Nothing will change it, until it destroys its host, humanity, exactly as the cancer process destroys its host.