Obama to propose $10 per barrel oil tax

[Lloyd]

Well republicans don't believe in subsidies either, and the hard core ones would prefer them all to go away. Perhaps that is a starting point of common ground.

 

[ecarfan]

Republicans savage Obamas oil tax plan - POLITICO

The very first day that:
1) There is a Democratic president and...
2) There are 218 Democratic members of the House and
3) There are 51 Democratic members of the Senate

Completely predictable reaction to Obama's modest and sensible proposal. It will indeed take Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress to make it happen.

 

[rays427]

From what I can tell this is a tax if it's charged to the oil companies. Here is the definition of a fee "In general a fee is a voluntarily incurred governmental charge in exchange for a benefit conferred on the payer, which fee should somehow reasonably approximate the payer's fair share of the costs incurred by the government in providing the benefit." I actually don't think it matters what you call it eventually the folks who use oil will pay for it. This includes higher price for shipping, plastics, etc in addition to higher gasoline/diesel prices. I actually think it's worthwhile to tax fossil fuels but the oil companies will not be able to eat it. If you look at the rate of return of oil companies they are much less than many/most industries. It's extremely capital intensive and very risky business compared to Apple, Google Facebook, etc.

 

[Grendal]

Yeah. I've been saying this for a long time. I'd really like to see foreign oil imports pay an even higher fee. The naysayers will say that it will harm the economy but Americans were paying a lot more just a year ago and the economy didn't crash.

 

[deonb]

You know one way to pass this - get rid of the Estate Tax in the same bill and allocate that $20-odd billion lost revenue from the Oil Tax, and then use the rest on renewable subsidies.

The same representatives who would vote against carbon taxes would have an impossibly hard time with their Super PAC buddies if they vote against a real chance of getting rid of the Estate Tax.


I personally like the Estate Tax, but I'd like a carbon tax more.