While conservative lawmakers continue to demand more and more from Main Street Americans in the form of cuts to crucial services and public investment, they have continued to defend subsidies for the oil industry. Think Progress has the story.
In March, the House Republicans voted unanimously to defend subsidies for Big Oil.
Appearing on Fox News last week, former GOP Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin downplayed the billions of dollars of subsidies the oil industry gets from taxpayers. Asked about the subsidies by Fox Host Bret Baier, Palin responded that we shouldn’t worry too much about them because they only cost four billion dollars:
BAIER: What about ending oil subsidies? Subsidies for oil companies. Where do you stand on that?
PALIN: Here’s where we need to go there nationally, what I did as Governor of Alaska, which is obviously an energy-producing state. As for the government subsidies that we’re hearing Obama flirting with right now, and wanting to decrease those or eliminate those, we’re only talking about four billion dollars. Compare that to the 14 trillion dollar debt that he our president has certainly contributed to.
Watch it:
And in a radio interview with News Radio 1000 KTOK last week, Rep. James Lankford (R-OK) echoed a similar talking point, saying that the four billion dollars in subsidies are not even a drop in the bucket:
HOST: Congressman, the President, speaking of him, is calling on Congress to eliminate all these tax provisions for oil and gas. [...] What are you thinking about this? [...] What will Congress do?
LANKFORD: [...] We’re spending too much money. Raising four billion in gas taxes doesn’t solve the price of gas and is not going to be able to solve our deficit. Four billion is not going to be a drop in the bucket compared to what we need to take on, and that’s our spending.
Watch it:
While it is true that four billion dollars is a small part of the federal budget deficit, it’s also simultaneously true that it is a great deal of money in real terms that is being wasted. And it’s 1,200 times the amount of money that House Republicans were demanding would be saved from cutting off money to NPR.
In recent days, a number of congressional Republicans have seemingly backed off their support for oil subsidies after being probed n the issue by angry constituents at town halls. These include Reps. Joe Walsh (IL), Tom McClintock (CA), and Dan Webster (FL). (HT: MoxNewsDotCom Youtube account)
– A Think Progress repost.
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$4 billion for oil subsidies is just a drop in the bucket, but $75 million for planned parenthood must be cut if we have any hope of ending deficit spending.
That makes sense to me!
$4 billion / 300 million Americans = $13.33 for every man, woman, and child in the country.
That’s my share of the Oil Tax deferment. Yours too. That’s about $50 a family.
Is this a great country, or what?
She’s got a point. Let’s nail them for poisoning the land and water, polluting the air, sending GHG’s into the atmosphere, and causing us to blog $1 trillion in the Middle East to secure their deliveries. That will add at least a zero to the $4 billion figure, or $40 billion per year.
Funny how military spending and oil subsidies are always a “drop in the bucket” and too insignificant to even consider cutting! I’d take a machete to the Pentagon’s budget, then tax the heck out of big oil and dirty coal.
If it isn’t much money, then the oil companies won’t even miss it.
catman306 @ 2: You need to account for the folks that do not pay taxes. Those that are too old or too young or too poor or in EXXON et al’s case too rich to pay taxes that would most likely double the amount for the rest of us. Pushing $100 per family of 4.
“A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money” Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen 12th Minority Leader, U.S. Senate 1959-1969
“responsibly exploiting and extracting our God given natural resources.” said Sarah Palin.
Only the words ‘exploiting and extracting’ are true.
responsibly? the Gulf of Mexico.
our? and what of all the generations to come. It’s an accident of history that we don’t respect the commons. Another creates private property.
God given? or from climate change millions of years ago.
natural? Nature buried the stuff.
resource? How can something that destroys an entire planetary ecosystem be a resource?
Yes, it is pretty apparent that creatures who absolutely insist that Planned Parenthood be gutted, that cuts fall only on the weak, the defenceless, the poor, the young etc, but that the rich and powerful must go on receiving every last cent of their larcenous extractions, are not a grand advertisement for humanity. Of course every second that they remain in total control and dominance of the planet brings us that much closer to species extinction. They almost got us there with nuclear terror, and, let’s face it, the planet would have been less damaged and recovered more quickly if Dr Strangelove had been a documentary and we had got it all over with in the 1960s. We’ve done an absolutely hideous job of destroying life in the last fifty years, all to enrich a tiny, hyper-avaricious elite. Weigh us in the balance as a species, and we come up short.
Sarah Palin’s views on any topic other than that of her immediate family is worth a warm bucket of……
Sorry, but I do loath her and her ilk.
John McCormick
Sure, $4B a year would be small change if Obama had run up 14 trillion dollars in only 2 years. Hang on … he didn’t run it all up himself???
Aye Mulga, on the money as ever. Fundamentally our way of life is unsustainable and has been for decades. A belief in year on year economic growth is driving us to the edge but the cognitive processes of the population at large are inadequate in dealing with complex, multi-layered problems and the interlinked processes, because basically the institutions of governance are ossified from the appointment of money backed ignoramuses and/or the just plain corrupt.
When civilizations reach such a cognitive road block, where any attempts to produce lasting solutions are stifled by short-termism interests, then a descent into faith and fantasy becomes the norm. Blame anything and anybody except recognise and face the real demons becomes the rule of the day.
Keep the masses distracted by entertainments (faux competitions, fashion, gossip and other such tat) and the next must-have gadget, and obscure important news by manufacturing events – this with the aid of the media of course.
The likes of Palin fit well into such a trivialised society where the lack of any obvious signs of intelligence, or even education, is an asset.
This is a theme, building upon the conclusions of such as Jared Diamond, that Rebecca D. Costa fleshes out in The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction.
I have only just started reading this so will hold fire on a value judgment on this book for now.
Are you kidding me? I work for the Agricultural Research Service, and we are desparately trying to get funding to address the issue of weather extremes and food security. Our entire yearly budget is a billion dollars! And(!) we just went through another round of budget cuts.
Some days, there just a big enough head vise.
Uh! Oh!
Already a few wrinkles in The Watchman’s Rattle. The book clearly needs some fact check editing and a little more input. It was a Waxman-Markey bill and not a Marquis Waxman as stated in the book and Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk and not from Czechoslovakia. Mendel died in January 1884 and the Czechoslovakia did not exist before October 1918.
The work of Dubner and Levitt ‘Freakonomics’ is given far too much credence.
Is Sarah making the ‘I’m only a little bit pregnant’ argument? The GOP voted last month to protect subsidies for oil companies and are being forced to defend that position in their town meetings. Over and over again they are being caught saying ‘Absolutely. Get rid of subsidies for oil companies.’ Those are words of Rep. Joe Walsh, who voted along with rest of them just last month. The arrogance of these cretins is finally being noticed by the fools who put them into office in the first place.
At the same time Sarah Palin defends oil-company subsidies as “only $4 billion”, Richard Burr introduces a bill to merge the EPA into the Department of Energy (a train wreck if ever there was one) — which, his press release says, would save $3 billion dollars.
Gee, do you think they could at least get themselves on the same page, policy-wise?