So are the numbers for other programs we are talking about cutting or defunding. Planned Parenthood ($360M in 2009). Public Broadcasting ($422M). NEA (about $160M). In the game of political budget cuts, its better to make a stink about peanuts.
These programs aren’t getting cut because energy companies receive too-rich subsidies, they are getting cut because individuals and families receive too-rich subsidies.
Take that child tax credit I mentioned previously. In 2008, 17.5% of the nations 142 million returns filed took a tax credit averaging $1,209 per claim, $30.4 billion that year alone. Had the credit not been doubled to $1,000, there would have been an additional $15 billion, plenty to fund the programs listed. Had the credit not been passed in the first place, the US Government would have an additional $200 billion+ in its coffers over the past decade.
Remove the standard deduction (and itemized deductions) and you gain $150-500 billion/year. However, the system will collapse before people vote to end their own personal subsidies.
Wait, you’re really arguing that the government generously admitting that you have expenses beyond supporting it is a subsidy? Why do you think the government is rightly entitled to more of the profits of your labor than they currently seize?
This post is exactly correct. Oil companies receive essentially no meaningful subsidies. Politicians that state otherwise are either: 1) lying; or 2) ignorant. It is absolutely absurd to consider depletion or the ability to expense intangible drilling costs (the two main supposed subsidies) as subsidies when the first is simply the oil and gas industry’s version of DD&A available to every single company in every industry and the latter is simply a timing difference in taxation that most people, if informed, would wonder why they can’t expense more.