The Senate continued debate Monday afternoon on Sen. Robert Menendez’s (D-N.J.) bill repealing $2 billion in tax breaks to Big Oil. The debate has given major recipients of Big Oil money the chance to defend a profitable industry, while it skims even higher profits from record gas prices.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for instance, has the most money of any senator from oil and gas this cycle. He’s the No. 8 recipient in oil and gas career contributions in Congress, taking over $1.15 million during his tenure.

Republicans like McConnell, who said a debate on oil subsidies is a “waste of the public’s time,” used one debunked myth after another yesterday afternoon:

LIE: More Domestic Drilling Would Lower Gas Prices: McConnell claimed Republicans have the “solution” to gas prices while Democrats are lacking. The GOP’s answers include Keystone XL pipeline and drilling, neither of which lower prices.

FACT: More Drilling Increases Big Oil Profits: Experts note that production doesn’t impact gas prices; if it did, our current eight-year high in domestic energy gas prices would mean $2 gas. An Associated Press statistical analysis finds absolutely no support that drilling lowers gas prices. Neither would Keystone XL help Americans at the pump; it would only send prices higher. The pipeline “risks raising prices as much as 20 cents a gallon in the Midwest, Great Plains and Rocky Mountains,” according to a 2010 Canadian report.

LIE: Big Oil Tax Breaks Promote Drilling.: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said taxes are an “inconvenient fact” that “lead to lower production.” “As we tax these energy companies it is sure not going to lead them to produce things that are more affordable more abundant in fact it will have the resulting impact of impacting negatively the prices on American consumers,” she said.

FACT: Big Oil Tax Breaks Increase Big Oil Profits.: A Congressional Research Service report from May 2011 found that the repeal of five key oil industry tax breaks would lead to little or no increase of gasoline prices. Experts like oil industry analyst Tom Kloza agree that it would have no impact.

Americans know that “oil companies that want to make too much profit” deserve the most blame for higher gas prices, a new Reuters poll found. Republican senators are working to increase the $137 billion in profits the Big Five oil companies sucked from working families last year, instead of helping their constituents.

Our guest blogger is Emilie Surrusco, communications director, Alaska Wilderness League.

Last week in Anchorage, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) held a joint press briefing with Shell Oil. The topic was Shell’s aggressive plans to drill 10 wells in the Arctic’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. Sen. Murkowski –- who has taken close to $1.5 million from dirty energy companies over the course of her career — was ostensibly trying to find out if Shell really could clean up a spill in the Arctic’s treacherous and icy conditions. Lo and behold, she concluded that they could:

During questioning by reporters, Murkowski acknowledged she has “long been an advocate for responsible oil and gas development in our state” and that the presentation gave her “more assurances that Shell really is building a response community up in the Arctic.”

This kind of theater is not unusual in a state where oil literally fuels 82 percent of the state’s budget. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t Alaskans who are opposed to drilling in our pristine Arctic Ocean – in fact, those who stand to lose the most, a vocal group of Inupiat people who continue to live off the bounty of Alaska’s Arctic waters in much the same way as generations before them, are the most courageous critics of Alaska’s reliance on oil. It also doesn’t mean that the rest of us don’t have a stake in what happens to a region that is priceless in its beauty and uniqueness – and in the fact that it functions as the world’s air conditioner. As climate change causes Arctic ice to melt at an alarming rate, we can’t afford to hand our Arctic over to oil companies like Shell.

What Murkowski and Shell didn’t say at last week’s press pageantry was that there is no way to effectively clean up a spill in the Arctic’s extreme, remote conditions, as reiterated recently with a comprehensive study by the federal government’s scientific arm. Despite recent technological advances in mechanical recovery for oil spill response, with the Arctic’s extreme weather conditions and broken ice, the amount of oil that could be cleaned up is estimated at a mere 1 to 20 percent, according to the USGS report. Meanwhile, Shell’s oil spill response plan for the Arctic states that the company would be able to clean up 90 percent of the oil in the event of a spill. This from a company that was recently found to own oil rigs in the northern North Sea that caused the majority of 100 potentially lethal spills.

What’s more, Alaska’s Arctic region is so remote – there are no large roads, no hotels, no major airports, no boat docks – that the nearest Coast Guard station — a critical component to any oil spill response — is 1,000 miles away. Even after BP’s disaster in the Gulf, Alaska’s politicians and the oil cheerleaders in Congress continue to push for Arctic drilling. Shell’s plan for the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea could be approved as soon as next month.

That is why a growing coalition of concerned organizations launched a national campaign to protect our one and only Arctic. Over the next year, we will be using a combination of media and grassroots tactics to bring these facts to light. Because once the American public learns that Shell and its cronies in Congress are willing to destroy one of our nation’s greatest natural treasures to further pad their already-bulging pockets, the Obama administration will have no choice but to tell Shell – if you can’t clean up a spill, you can’t drill. We hope you will join us in the Arctic on July 4, 2012 (which also happens to be when Shell hopes to begin drilling) for a celebration of the Alaskan Arctic’s “independence” from Shell.

The habitability of our planet is threatened by fossil-fueled politicians who can’t tell the difference between pollution and energy. After a White House meeting on energy reform this morning, Republican senators rejected President Obama’s call for a price on carbon pollution, repeating the Newt Gingrich lie that it would be a “national energy tax”:

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “As long as we take a national energy tax off the table, there’s no reason we can’t have clean energy legislation.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): “A cap-and-trade energy tax will not sell at this time. We’ve got to find a path that does not put an added burden on American taxpayers.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who refused to attend the meeting: “I wish the president would focus his attention on stopping the spill and cleaning it up instead of trying to use this crisis as an opportunity to push for a new national energy tax.”

These senators know they’re lying when they equate greenhouse gas pollution with “energy.” Their states are being ravaged by our overheated climate system, including the freak flooding of Nashville and Kentucky and the melting of Alaska’s tundra.

Murkowski is being especially disingenuous about finding a “path that does not put an added burden on American taxpayers.” Right now, American taxpayers are paying the costs of fossil fuel pollution — the destruction of our health, our oceans, and our climate — while corporate polluters like oil disaster giant BP rake in the profits.

The rhetoric of these climate peacocks who put party over planet can’t hide their track record of playing the willing stooge for pollution profiteers.