Posted on 04/25/2011 3:46:37 PM PDT by Qbert
At a time of skyrocketing gas prices and near-record profits for oil companies, House Speaker John Boehner made a major concession today: Congress should consider cutting multi-billion dollar subsidies to oil companies.
"Everybody wants to go after the oil companies and, frankly, they've got some part of this to blame," the Ohio Republican told ABC News today.
Blame aside, what about the cold, hard cash -- the billions of dollars in tax breaks and other subsidies big oil receives every year? President Obama has proposed doing away with many of them, which he says would save $45 billion over the next 10 years.
"It's certainly something we should be looking at," Boehner said. "We're in a time when the federal government's short on revenues. They ought to be paying their fair share."
That is a major departure for the speaker on an issue that Republicans have long defended as necessary to encourage domestic oil production.
The speaker said that while he wanted to "take a look" at oil subsidies. He also wanted to "see all the facts" first.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
LLS
“I fail to see the problem with cutting subsidies. There’s no reason taxpayers should be paying oil companies to drill.”
The depletion allowance used in all extractive mining industries is not simply a subsidy.
It is more like depreciation.
Taxpayers don’t “pay” oil companies to drill. They let them “write off” tangible and intangible costs of drilling unsuccessful wells in the year incurred, and capitalize the same costs when successful.
WE didn’t get to vote him in as Speaker...the House did...and we are so screwed.
SELL OUT
Boehner is a joke. Wtf is he doing?
Keeping going into 2012 defending oil companies, see how it works out.
Yet another reason to throw out Speaker Bonehead.
This guy ain’t smart.
There of course should be no subsidies to any corporation, but there is nothing wrong with giving a tax break if it is directly related to investment in the US. A billion dollars invested in oil exploration/drilling will eventually result in extra revenues that will be taxed at the normal corporate rate, but in the interim the investment will generate good paying jobs and as a result more income tax revenue. Perhaps Boehner could work on killing the subsidies for drilling in countries like Brazil, before he attacks tax advantages for drilling and exploration in the US. The man is not up to the task.
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