During last week’s recess, Representative Frank Guinta (R-NH) felt the heat once again at a town hall back in New Hampshire, and this time had an odd recommendation. When a constituent asked  a question about ending Big Oil subsidies – which received a round of applause from the audience – Guinta pointed his finger at the recent failed Senate vote to roll back some subsidies for the richest oil companies. He said that if oil companies lost their subsidies, they shouldn’t have to pay for leases. His suggestion prompted shouts of “ridiculous” and “that’s a giveaway to Big Oil” from angry Granite Staters:

Guinta: Here’s what I would suggest. You’re going to eliminate that, also eliminate the lease payments they have to make. Offset it. And be fair.

Audience: fair? [cross talk]

…

Guinta: So the specific issue is, if you’re going to get rid of that tax benefit to those five companies, let’s also eliminate lease payments, make it fair.

[crosstalk]

Constituent: That’s ridiculous. That’s a giveaway to Big Oil.

Watch it:

Guinta failed to mention the votes he’s taken against ending Big Oil handouts. Less than two weeks ago, he voted against ending a tax credit for oil companies. And earlier in the year, he voted against recovering $53 billion in foregone royalty payments from oil companies, and against ending $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil. In the last campaign cycle, Guinta received $14,000 from the oil and gas industry.

It’s not the first time Guinta faced a fiery crowd over Big Oil subsidies. Back home during the April recess, Guinta was forced to defend his votes to an often contentious crowd:

Republican Representative Frank Guinta spent much of the evening defending the tough decisions Congress has proposed to get the nation’s debt under control. He received occasional boos and shouts from audience members upset over changes to Medicare, subsidies to oil companies, and extended tax cuts for wealthy Americans.

Last week, on the same day that it announced an $11 billion first quarter profit, oil giant Exxon Mobil publicly whined about the renewed push in Congress to cut the $4 billion in subsidies that go to oil companies every year. “Over the last week as earnings season has approached, the Democratic Party leadership again talked about removing what they call $4 billion in oil industry subsidies,” Exxon’s vice president for public and government affairs said. “But what they really mean is that they want to increase our taxes by taking away long-standing deductions for our industry.”

Of course, this is pretty rich coming from a company that has consistently broken and then rebroken the record for yearly profits, making it the most profitable company in the Fortune 500, while simultaneously paying far below the statutory corporate income tax rate due to various loopholes, deductions, and the use of offshore tax havens. In fact, in 2009, Exxon paid no income taxes to the U.S. whatsoever.

But in a desperate bid to convince everyone that it should continue receiving billions in taxpayer-funded largesse, Exxon is out with new claims about its level of taxation, saying that it actually pays more taxes in the U.S. than it earns here in profits:

In the first months of this year, Exxon (XOM, Fortune 500) says it paid $3.1 billion in taxes in the United States — more than even the $2.6 billion in profit it made selling oil and gas. To get to that number, the company includes the federal and state gasoline taxes that the company collects from drivers and passes on to government coffers. It also includes payroll taxes the company pays on behalf of its employees.

The problem here is that Exxon is counting as part of its tax burden a tax that it simply does not pay. The gas tax — which is 18.4 cents per gallon, plus whatever individual states decide to levy — is paid entirely by consumers. Unless Exxon wants us to believe that it is knocking 18.4 cents (or more) off of every gallon it sells, and turning that money over to the government, this number is absolute hokum. (Many economists also consider the employer side of the payroll tax as being paid by employees, in the form of lower wages, making Exxon’s number even worse.)

The fact of the matter is that the government is spending billions each year to support an industry that clearly doesn’t need it and that already takes advantage of the byzantine U.S. corporate tax code to lower its tax payment far below the rate that’s on the books. Instead of accepting that the rationale for oil subsidies has vanished, Big Oil is concocting bizarre numbers to justify continuing taxpayer giveaways to a hugely profitable industry.

For more information, read today’s Progress Report, “The Showdown Over Big Oil.”

By Christy Goldfuss, Public Lands Project Director at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

For freshman Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA), record pay for oil CEOs as Americans suffer from surging gas prices is the realization of the American Dream. According to an AP analysis, the pay package for ConocoPhillips’ top executive, Jim Mulva, went up by 25 percent last year to $17.9 million, money sucked from taxpayer subsidies and drivers’ wallets. “Mulva was paid a $1.5 million salary, stock awards of $6.2 million and option awards worth $5.7 million. He also received perks of $294,000, including the personal use of company cars and aircraft, life insurance premiums and medical services.”

In a House Natural Resources Hearing last week, Landry had a remarkable exchange with Michael J. Fox (a lobbyist for gas station owners, not the actor). Pressed on Big Oil’s supposedly low profit margins, Fox pointed out that Exxon CEO Lee Raymond’s retirement package was “$450 million dollars for doing a 90 hour job,” and the service station retailer gets paid $60,000 for doing a 90 hour job. Landry responded by claiming that’s just the American Dream, and that Big Oil executives must be smarter and better than everyone else, including small business owners:

LANDRY: But isn’t that what America is all about, about that American dream, about that kid who might not have it real good and grows up in a poor family and works his way to the top, and shouldn’t he be able to make as much money as he possibly can and work as less hours as he possibly can, if he’s that smart and that good? Should we destroy the American dream to put your equation into play here?

FOX: He’s not “that smart” or “that good.”

Watch it:

Rep. Landry’s equation for the American dream includes $4 billion dollars a year in taxpayer subsidies to corporations that continue to make record profits. Over the past decade, the big five oil companies – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell – made nearly $1 trillion in profits. The companies had record profits in 2008, which was the same year that oil reached all-time high of $147 per barrel (USA Today link). In 2009, ExxonMobil did not pay any federal taxes, because of all the federal help it received.

The oil and gas industry spent $146 million lobbying Congress last year, including $87,450 to Landry’s campaign, making oil and gas his largest single industry contributor. Mr. Landry and his Republican allies have voted unanimously to protect the oil and gas subsidies. For most, the American Dream means working hard, playing by the rules, and achieving success, not on the backs of other hardworking taxpaying citizens.

Transcript: Read more

Last weekend, Americans across the country organized protests as part of a growing Main Street Movement to stand with organized labor and demand that the burden of deficit reduction not be placed solely on the backs of the middle class and public employees. US Uncut, modeled on UK-inspired demonstrations against tax dodgers, protested outside of multiple Bank of America branches, noting that BofA paid nothing in federal taxes in 2009.

BofA is hardly alone in this regard. Many companies — such as Boeing, General Electric, and Wells Fargo — have paid nothing to the federal treasury in recent years. Others — such as Google and Pfizer — have dramatically lowered their tax rate. Though the U.S. has a high statutory corporate tax rate, the effective tax rate that corporations actually pay is far lower, due to the myriad loopholes and credits in the corporate tax code, as well as the widespread sheltering of income in tax havens. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found, “corporate tax revenues are now at historical lows as a share of the economy.”

Of course, corporations could not get away with this behavior if policymakers actually set and enforced rules that prevented it. But conservatives in Congress have gone to great lengths to allow tax avoidance to continue. Here are six ways in which conservatives aid and abet corporate tax avoidance:

– PROTECTING OFFSHORE DEFERRAL: The Obama administration and Senate Democrats last year proposed ending the practice of allowing corporations to claim domestic tax credits for profits they earn overseas while deferring tax payments on those profits. Republicans blocked the bill in the Senate. Corporations use offshore deferral to lower their effective tax rate by 20 points or more.

– SLASHING THE IRS BUDGET: In their proposed spending plan for the rest of the fiscal year, House Republicans suggested cutting the Internal Revenue Services’s budget by $600 million, even though “every dollar the Internal Revenue Service spends for audits, liens and seizing property from tax cheats brings in more than $10.” IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said that a $600 million cut in this year’s budget “would result in the IRS collecting $4 billion less” through tax enforcement programs.

– PUSHING FREE TRADE WITH TAX HAVENS: Republicans in Congress have been pushing for rapid, uncritical ratifying of a free-trade pact with Panama, even though Panama has a notorious reputation as a tax haven. Before advancing the agreement, the Obama administration is pushing for “implementation of a tax information exchange agreement the two countries signed last year to address tax haven concerns.”

– ENACTING REPATRIATION HOLIDAYS: When corporations bring money they earn overseas back to the United States, they are required to pay the full statutory corporate tax rate. But in 2005, they were allowed to bring money back at a drastically lower rate (delivering a windfall to executives and none of the expected economic benefits). Both Republicans in Congress and conservative activists are pushing for yet another repatriation holiday.

– ENDORSING TAXPAYER GIVEAWAYS: House Republicans (joined by 13 Democrats) voted unanimously this week to preserve big oil subsidies worth billions of dollars a year, even as Big Oil companies continue to reap record profits. In fact, Republicans have continually protected billions in annual giveaways to Big Oil, allowing those corporate giants to pay nothing into the federal treasury.

– PUBLICLY DEFENDING THE DODGERS: Both House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) have said that widespread corporate tax evasion is a good reason to lower the statutory corporate tax rate. When asked by ThinkProgress if it was fair that Bank of America pays no federal corporate taxes, former governor and 2012 GOP presidential contender Tim Pawlenty replied “the corporate tax rate in America is too high.”

For more information, read today’s Progress Report, “Making Corporations Pay Their Fair Share.”