Obama's Most Egregious Attack on Gas & Oil Yet

President Barack Obama is about to unveil an ambitious plan for a “21st century clean transportation system.” And he hopes to fund it with a tax on oil.

Obama aides told POLITICO that when he releases his final budget request next week, the president will propose more than $300 billion worth of investments over the next decade in mass transit, high-speed rail, self-driving cars, and other transportation approaches designed to reduce carbon emissions and congestion. To pay for it all, Obama will call for a $10 “fee” on every barrel of oil, a surcharge that would be paid by oil companies but would presumably be passed along to consumers.

AND

The biggest chunk of Obama’s proposed new spending, about $20 billion a year—roughly equivalent to the EPA and Interior Department budgets combined—would go to “enhanced transportation options,” especially alternatives to driving and flying. That would include subways, buses, light rail, freight rail modernization projects, and a major expansion of the high-speed rail initiative that Obama launched in his 2009 stimulus bill. It would also include a 150 percent increase for a more popular stimulus program known as TIGER, which provides competitive grants for multi-modal transportation projects with measurable economic and environmental benefits.

Obama’s plan will also include about $10 billion a year to encourage local, regional and state governments to plan and build smarter infrastructure projects, including incentives to reduce carbon emissions through land-use planning, public transit, electric-vehicle charging, and other strategies. There would be a Climate Smart Fund to reward states that make greener choices with existing federal dollars, as well as competitive grant programs to promote region-wide planning, more livable cities, and infrastructure projects with greater resilience to climate impacts.



Read more: http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/02/obama-oil-tax-budget-0...

 

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Permalink Reply by John Cape on February 5, 2016 at 7:03pm

Oops. Guess I missed the existing federal tax on gasoline in my comments. 

Yep, this is another federal tax on consumers, make no mistake about it.  It's disguised as something useful for global warming and also something useful for attacking the evil oil industry. These kinds of taxes explain why Europeans pay so much more for gasoline than we do.

However, if we only taxed imported oil, it would still be a  tax on consumers, but would be wonderfully protective for the U.S. upstream business. Heck why stop at $10 a barrel?  Tax all imported oil less than $60 a barrel.  At $30 a barrel, the tax would be $30. At $40 a barrel, the tax would be $20.  The good news is that WTI would be $60 a barrel if this passed.

At $60 a barrel, the US oil and gas industry is back in business. OPEC gets hoisted on their own low oil prices (since they are only making $30 a barrel on their oil sales to us and our government gets the difference) and we get to close the oil import deficit, increase employment in the oil and gas sector, increase domestic production, reduce foreign oil imports and screw OPEC who is trying to screw us. What's not to like?

A number of other countries are doing this exact same thing. Mexico and China, for example set one gasoline price for the whole country and it's not to the consumer's benefit. When I was in China last November, they were paying something close to $3.25 a gallon!  It's no wonder their oil demand has not increased - most of the Chinese consumers are not even aware that oil prices have fallen!

 

Permalink Reply by Jon on February 6, 2016 at 9:30pm

It turns out that solar cells aren't made out of carcinogens and batteries aren't toxic.

Permalink Reply by Joseph-Ohio on February 6, 2016 at 8:55am

Reads like a case of 'rectalvisionitis' to me.

Permalink Reply by Nancy LeNau on February 6, 2016 at 9:13pm

I saw this on the news.......    I almost choked !   $10.00 per barrel is just CRAZY.... at the price of Oil Today !   So Sad ......

Permalink Reply by Joseph-Ohio on February 7, 2016 at 7:27am

At today's posted $30.89 / barrel (top of page) it would tack an additional 32.3% on top of the cost.

That would make the cost $40.89 / barrel.

The $10.00 / barrel tax would then represent about 24.5% of it's cost.


That is a horrible penalty which would surely be passed on to domestic consumers in every purchase they make.

There is no reason for the penalizing tax other than over reach by our Federal Government.

What else would be done with the new money ?

Even more funding of 3rd world developing countries (perhaps potential / outright enemy terrorist haven states) comes to my mind.

More stupidity ?

More abuse of our own country / population ?

Permalink Reply by Nancy LeNau on February 7, 2016 at 9:22pm

Joseph-Ohio, VERY WELL SAID !!!   Thank you....

Permalink Reply by Joseph-Ohio on February 7, 2016 at 9:49pm

Likewise very well said Nancy.

We're on the same bus.

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