The higher gasoline prices go, the more the president carps about oil industry “subsidies.” But it’s a diversionary tactic. He knows that eliminating tax breaks would do nothing to ease the pain at the pump.
Late last month, as the Senate was getting ready to vote a bill to repeal tax deductions for oil companies, President Obama complained that “Congress thinks it’s a good idea to send billions more of your tax dollars to the oil industry.”
“I think it is time,” he said, that Big Oil “got by without more help from taxpayers. The … industry is doing just fine.”
That bill was rejected. But if the president doesn’t like current policy, he’s free to lead the drive for change, which he’s done the last three years by submitting budgets that would eliminate what he calls “subsidies” for the oil industry.
But he shouldn’t be able to get away with distorting the facts to further a political agenda.
Demonizing the ‘rich’ (such as Big Oil) was popularized with the “Robin Hood” stories of the Middle Ages. The problem is that the original stories were slightly off-target. Robin Hood’s actual paradigm is to rob from the tyrants and give to the oppressed. Originally (in the 13th century) there was not much difference. Today, however, it is the ‘rich’ who create jobs that give the people opportunities to prosper. The ‘tyrants’ have government jobs and revel in micromanaging the lives of everyone else, especially who actually control substantial resources. These tyrants often hope to intimidate the ‘rich’ into making large contributions to re-election campaigns for themselves or their patrons.