On the other hand, what is the budget of the federal Department of Education, which is a massively oversized bureaucracy that probably does more harm than good to this country? I'll bet the annual budget is well over Exxon's $10.7 billion profit for the quarter. Let's shut down 80% of the activites at the federal DOE and return that to the American people as a tax cut. Then eliminate all the useless activity at HHS and return part of its budget to the people. Federal budget cutting could help the American people a lot, while increased taxation of oil company profits is inherently destructive and could easily lead to an oil shortage and $4 gasoline later in this decade. When you look at federal budget cutting, you find five billion here and five billion there and before long it adds up to real money.
How about we drop the fuel tax, drill all our own oil (we have the reserves, ten year tops from the start of building to get it up and running) and use the profits that would go back to government (like what goes on in Alaska) to fund such projects.