Nels Mitchell on Energy & Oil

Oil & gas industries get huge subsidies despite high profits

A: Members of the Senate and Congress spend too much time grabbing for headlines. We have a tax system that plays favorites and is inefficient. We need to make our tax system fairer and simplify it. We also need to increase transparency and eliminate waste and fraud. Federal subsidies to profitable, well-established corporations are a waste of the taxpayer's money. For instance, oil and gas industries are highly profitable, but have been getting huge subsidies from the U.S. taxpayers for almost a century. A conservative think tank recently estimated that corporate welfare in the federal budget costs taxpayers almost $100 billion a year. That's $870 for each one of America's 115 million families. The Simpson-Bowles Commission provided a good starting point for serious work on tax reform and fiscal responsibility