Obama Gets Noisy About Gas Again (Updated)
Today, President Obama called on Congress to end “subsidies” for the major oil producers. Speaking in the Rose Garden, the president said:
Right now, the biggest oil companies are raking in record profits –- profits that go up every time folks pull up into a gas station. But on top of these record profits, oil companies are also getting billions a year — billions a year in taxpayer subsidies -– a subsidy that they’ve enjoyed year after year for the last century.
Think about that. It’s like hitting the American people twice. You’re already paying a premium at the pump right now. And on top of that, Congress, up until this point, has thought it was a good idea to send billions of dollars more in tax dollars to the oil industry.
It’s not as if these companies can’t stand on their own. Last year, the three biggest U.S. oil companies took home more than $80 billion in profits. Exxon pocketed nearly $4.7 million every hour. And when the price of oil goes up, prices at the pump go up, and so do these companies’ profits. In fact, one analysis shows that every time gas goes up by a penny, these companies usually pocket another $200 million in quarterly profits. Meanwhile, these companies pay a lower tax rate than most other companies on their investments, partly because we’re giving them billions in tax giveaways every year.
None of this is new. Like one of those dolls in an old cuckoo clock, President Obama periodically appears to smear someone somewhere in America who happens to be engaging in business and making a profit. Today’s speech was recycled from the one he delivered on March 1, for instance. Congress will ignore him, and he’ll be back in a few weeks to say the same thing again.
As for the “subsidies” he mentions, they are actually tax breaks, and they’re not unique to the oil companies. They’re the same tax breaks that other American corporations enjoy. The president is only targeting oil companies because they’re a convenient boogeyman, and because he’s getting hammered in the polls over his policies and the skyrocketing price of gas. If he gets his way, the oil companies will see their tax bills raised. They will pass that increase on to consumers — you. So Obama here is proposing to raise the price at the pump, not lower it.
The president used part of his camera time to inveigh against oil company profits, insisting that for every penny of price increase at the pump, oil companies make $200 million more money each quarter. But as usual, the devil is in the details. Is that per company, or spread out across the entire oil production industry? Based on logic and the way he worded it, Obama surely meant the latter, so the per company profit number is far smaller than he insinuated. This is a global industry he is talking about.
The graph above already includes federal tax. And I saw a version of this yesterday that had CT at 68.0 cents per gallon.
Almost everyone is talking about oil scarcity but we somehow forget that there is a number of other natural resources we are gradually running out of and their complete depletion would pose a serious threat to some industries and especially to the world of information technology. I am really concerned about whether the scientists will be able to find an effective solution to this problem other than the devastation of one of Earth’s most valuable natural resources – the ocean as suggested in the article.
Interesting that he starts out saying “subsidies” and then ends up saying “tax giveaways”. How about “keeping some of their money”?
Their money? To marxists, it’s not your money, it’s the State’s money and you should be grateful for however much they let you keep.
They aren’t even tax breaks. He is talking about obscure accounting rules on the depreciation schedules for different types of assets. I hope somebody in the press has the guts to ask him the details of those “taxpayer subsidies” the oil companies enjoy.
Look up Exxon’s Income Statement – they pay enormous taxes.
Perhaps he will now propose a “Windfall Profits Tax”?
I think congress wised up and didn’t pass Obozo’s request this time, and it seems that times they are a changing.
first there is more and more traffic going back at liberals, who blogs tend to be attack and run with no intellectual honesty of the questions being asked.
good sign.
then we are getting bipartisanship in congress. 414-0 they were bipartisan in striking down Obozo’s budget.
And maybe with some more new members of congress, reinforcements, we might actually have a budge from the senate, and one that will be real, with no automatic increases that are crippling this country’s economy.
I accidentally caught the ones little garden talk this am, wow, I’m quite certain any 5th grader here in Canada could have given a more detailed (and honest) assessment of these various tax-breaks vs subsidies to the Greens.
How can anyone watch this performance and seriouslly consider this man either intelligent or qualified for the position he holds today, and so desperately wants to retain. As a Canadian whose economic future is strongly aligned with our Southern neighbours, I sure hope you all do the right thing come November and relieve this guy of his job!
Dale, EVERY Mussolini-like Uhbama scolding, err ‘speech’ written of by our lapdog media is ALWAYS followed with, ‘..the President didn’t provide details of such grandiose plans he’d spoken of..’ – each and every time.
Most people with an I.Q. at or above body temp understand this ‘deletion’ as: Our CiC doesn’t know ANY extent of his banter other than what he’s read or is coached on moments/ hours prior.
The CiC is a glaringly obvious thin-skinned ideologue. He’s truly incapable of providing a lucid, unbiased and detail oriented message, discussion or debate.
Though I can’t fault him too much. He’s a politician, been on the public dole his entire life and has been told by ALL his handlers, again his entire life how, ‘intelligent’ he is.
I too don’t see it.
That vaunted Federal Fuel Tax was originally earmarked to support the construction of highways, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure. Guess what, it evaporated, just like the Social Security “lock box.” What a surprise. Give the Congresscritters money and they will spend it…not necessarily where it was supposed to be spent.
O’s “story” that he is responsible for increased oil/gas drilling in the U.S. has been so debunked that even the WaPo is reporting on it. 0 and his cohort simply don’t give a damn about the price of oil, except to the extent it might damage his re-election chances.
Bottom line: Profits bad. Serial taxation good.
“I hope somebody in the press has the guts to ask him the details of those “taxpayer subsidies” the oil companies enjoy.”
Is this joke? No one in current press corp seems to be able to find out any thing about Obama or what he believes.
Like it or not, Obama owns the gas price issue. It isn’t Bush’s problem, nor Congress, nor Exxon, nor space aliens. He is flailing around, trying to blame anyone else. If his grandmother were still available, you know he’d throw her under the bus.
Why is it that Obama and his worshipers simply cannot stand it when a company makes “record profits”?
Just think what the case would be if every single company in the country earned record profits this year? 0% unemployment, stock market screaming upward like a homesick angel, an almighty powerful dollar, undreamt wealth creation and prosperity for every American. Oh the horror of it!
And isn’t is odd too that their outrage over profits is so selective? I don’t hear any liberals bewailing Apple’s record profits. Why not?
Ah, the oil companies passed on their taxes to consumers. May be the Teleprompteur should do a Nixon price control and a Carter gas rationing.
While simply listening to Obama and the liberal’s false claims about oil companies being “subsidized” while making a profit is aggravating enough, the real value of tax deductions for oil company exploration costs is completely missed.
Tax write-offs for oil company exploration and research costs have produced more return-on-investment than anything else the federal government has ever done. Those tax savings were used by the oil companies to fund development of fracking technologies. And those fracking technologies have significantly reduced the production costs and increased the available reserves of domestic oil and gas. Each dollar of tax deductions given to the oil companies in the past few years will pay back that amount 20 or 30 times over in the next decade.
Rather than complaining about those tax deductions, Obama should be claiming credit for how incredibly profitable those tax credits turned out to be.
Oh, was Barry talking again? Must’a missed it. I had to go out to the truck and pick the stones from between the treads….they make a lot of noise but they still sound better than he does. In fact, may start calling them “obamas”.
“Wussat noise?”
“Oh…I went down a dirt road and got a bunch of obamas in my tires.”
“Sure do make a racket, don’t they?”
“Yup”.
Anybody have a clue to what Obama actually thinks and believes. I don’t but there are some things we work out by process of elimination. He has steadfastly resisted the development of our own energy resources. This did not originate with Obama but was well developed before he came on the scene. The EPA is a tool that gets the work done.
If the wind farms are as destructive to our flying fauna as I am reading it is, then it should come under the endangered specie act and be shut down immediately. Why don’t we look at this mess with a single eye?
Make a triangle using total expense for the base, net profit for the height and observe the hypotenuse, which is the market price. Lets change that a little and make all taxes the height and include profit in the expense. This will give a quite different picture than the expense/profit. What about total expenses on Apple and profit? How does big oil stack up. Surely by the rhetoric they must overshadow Apple and other large businesses that have huge profits due to size and not necessarily due to percentage.