The president is going after fossil fuel subsidies for the third straight year. He probably won’t have any more success this time.
When he releases his new budget in two weeks, President Obama will propose doing away with roughly $4 billion a year in subsidies and tax breaks for oil companies, in his third effort to eliminate federal support for an industry that remains hugely profitable.
Previous efforts have run up against bipartisan opposition in Congress and heavy lobbying from producers of oil, natural gas and coal.
Stronger Republican representation in Congress pretty much guarantees that this effort will fail this year and next. It’s not like Jack Gerard sounds worried.
“This is a tired old argument we’ve been hearing for two years now,” said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s main lobby in Washington. “If the president were serious about job creation, he would be working with us to develop American oil and gas by American workers for American consumers.”
Mr. Gerard noted that there was bipartisan opposition to lifting the tax breaks, adding: “The federal government by no stretch of the imagination subsidizes the oil industry. The oil industry subsidizes the federal government at a rate of $95 million a day.”
Bow down before your masters.
