It’s time to end the double-talk on oil. People from Wilmington and Los Angeles aren’t paying $3 a gallon for gas because of our “addiction to oil.” They are paying $3 a gallon because this administration’s national energy policy is written by the big oil companies.

Since President Bush took office, the price of gas has doubled - increased 100 percent.

High gas prices that make us queasy at the pump have been very good for the major oil companies. They are flush. Prices went up during Katrina. Six months later we learned that these oil companies made record breaking profits — $111 billion in 2005.

Click here to support our efforts to repeal tax breaks for oil and gas companies that don’t need them.

Last year Exxon Mobil reported the highest annual profits — $36 billion — of any corporation in US history. Those are profits approaching twice the return earned by the average American corporation.

The CEO of Exxon Mobile received a $400 million retirement package. His paycheck went through the roof, while the rest of us were left watching dollars tick up at the gas pump.

Since the 1990’s, there have been over 2,600 mergers in the petroleum industry. Today, the Big Five - Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Conoco, BP, and Shell - together control 48 percent of domestic production, 50% of domestic refining capacity, and over 60 percent of the retail market. That means market power, pricing power.

It is time for President Bush and Vice President Cheney to get tough with their big oil friends.

Last year, they gave them $2.6 billion dollars in oil and gas tax breaks in the energy bill. Guess what? It turns out they don’t need them.

I know - because I asked them.

The CEOs of the six largest oil and gas companies came in to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month.

So I asked them, under oath: Do you need these tax breaks? And they said: No. Each one agreed. No. They don’t need them.

So I have a simple, common sense proposal. Let’s repeal them. Let’s do it immediately. Let’s not give them billions in tax breaks that they clearly don’t need. It is a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Click here to support our efforts to repeal tax breaks for oil and gas companies that don’t need them.

This is a nonpartisan, no-brainer decision. We have the word of the oil companies themselves - they don’t need them.

Let’s take the first step in taking control of our national energy policy. Let’s show the oil companies that the days of handouts from the Bush administration are over.

Thank you,

Joe Biden

This entry was posted on Monday, May 1st, 2006 at 1:51 pm and is filed under general, Fiscal Responsibility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Also, you can trackback from your own site.