“The bipartisan roll shows how hard it is to eliminate subsidies for the powerful once they become law.”
About yesterday’s Senate energy subsidy votes, the Wall Street Journal editorializes:
… Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow rose first to increase tax subsidies to green energy sources, including a provision to resurrect the production tax credit, which mostly benefits the wind industry. The 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour credit is a taxpayer subsidy equal to almost 40% of the wholesale cost of electricity in 2011. Her amendment failed, but 49 Democrats supported the giveaways…
Most dismaying was the bipartisan trouncing of an amendment from South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint to eliminate tax credits and subsidies to all forms of energy—coal, gas, oil, wind, solar, biofuels, batteries and nuclear power. This would have saved taxpayers some $90 billion over 10 years, and Mr. DeMint proposed to use that money to finance a cut up to one percentage point in the corporate tax rate…
Follow the money.