Republicans Protect Giveaways To Big Oil

I have said that the Republicans are not really interested in cutting the deficit. They are just using deficit-cutting as a campaign tool to keep their base happy while continuing huge giveaways to the rich and the corporations. They proved this in the last Congress by giving the rich massive tax cuts (causing a budget deficit increase of at least $400 billion a year).

After raising the deficit by $400 billion (about a third of the total deficit), the Republicans have attacked government programs for ordinary Americans hurt by the recession. Their cuts, which they are so proud of, amount to less than a quarter of the amount they raised the deficit by. But yesterday they were given a new opportunity to show they are serious about deficit-cutting (instead of just gutting social programs they never liked). Once again they failed to do it.

Back when crude oil prices were low, the government created tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to the big oil companies. The subsidies were meant to help these companies bear the cost of exploring and drilling for new sources of the crude oil, and it worked. But those days are long past.

Crude oil prices have been pretty high for a while now, and for years the big oil companies have been making record profits. For the years between 2005 and 2009 the big oil companies made nearly half a trillion dollars of profit, and the profit just keeps rising. It has become clear that there is no longer a reason to continue the government subsidies. In fact the former CEO of Shell Oil, John Hoffmeister, recently admitted that with the high prices for oil the subsidies aren't needed anymore.

Instead of cutting programs for hurting Americans, the Democrats (in the House) decided that it made a lot more sense to get rid of these unneeded oil subsidies. A couple of weeks ago they proposed cutting $53 billion in these subsidies, but they were outvoted by Republicans. Yesterday the Democrats tried again. They were once again defeated on a 176-249 vote. Every single Republican voted to get giving the huge oil companies billions of dollars of government (taxpayer) money.

It just proves once again that the Republicans aren't really interested in cutting the deficit. They give massive tax cuts to the rich and enormous giveaways to the corporations -- neither of which actually needed the extra money. The also refuse to cut the hugely bloated defense budget (which eats up most of discretionary spending). They won't make cuts that really matter to reducing the deficit. They're only interested in getting rid of social programs that they have never liked (and getting rid of all of those programs wouldn't balance the budget).

They're lying when they talk about cutting the budget (which is probably why budget deficits grow larger under Republican administrations). It's time that Americans stopped believing the Republican lies.