Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act
At this hour, the U.S. Senate is voting on a bill that would get rid of federal subsidies for oil companies.
It’s called the Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act.
Some of the money saved would be used to reduce the budget deficit, and some of it would be used for tax breaks for clean energy companies instead.
Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow held a news conference this afternoon to talk about the act.
Stabenow calls the subsidies a relic from nearly a century ago that can only be removed by a change in the law because they’re written into the federal tax code.
Stabenow claims that oil companies themselves say the subsidies aren’t needed.
She asked the CEOs of BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips in a recent Senate hearing if their companies still needed the subsidies, and she says all five of them told her ‘no’.
The five companies have made about $1 trillion in profits between them in the last decade.
If the act makes it out of the Senate, Stabenow says it would have strong support in the House from Michigan Democrats.
But she says she’s not sure about how Michigan’s House Republicans would take it.
That would include the U.P.’s representative, Congressman Dan Benishek.
Posted by: Mike Hoey