Congress looking to multiply oil tax by 4!

****ing idiots. Whatever happened to the consumers not paying for this (which we all know in the end we do, but they're just aggravating it).


http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9FTDV7O1&show_article=1

WASHINGTON (AP) - Responding to the massive BP oil spill, Congress is getting ready to quadruple—to 32 cents a barrel—a tax on oil used to help finance cleanups. The increase would raise nearly $11 billion over the next decade.
The tax is levied on oil produced in the U.S. or imported from foreign countries. The revenue goes to a fund managed by the Coast Guard to help pay to clean up spills in waterways, such as the Gulf of Mexico.

The tax increase is part of a larger bill that has grown into a nearly $200 billion grab bag of unfinished business that lawmakers hope to complete before Memorial Day. The key provisions are a one-year extension of about 50 popular tax breaks that expired at the end of last year, and expanded unemployment benefits, including subsidies for health insurance, through the end of the year.

The House could vote on the bill as early as Tuesday. Senate leaders hope to complete work on it before Congress goes on a weeklong break next week.

Lawmakers want to increase the current 8-cent-a-barrel tax on oil to make sure there is enough money available to respond to oil spills. At least 6 million gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico since a drilling rig exploded April 20 off the Louisiana coast.

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders have said they expect BP to foot the bill for the cleanup.

"Taxpayers will not pick up the tab," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday.

BP executives told Congress last week they would pay "all legitimate claims" for damages. But the government needs upfront money to respond to spills, as well as money to pay for cleanups when the responsible party is unable to pay, or is unknown. Money spent from the fund can later be recovered from the company responsible for the spill.

The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund has about $1.5 billion available. Under current law, only $1 billion can be spent from the fund on a single incident. The bill would increase the spending limit to $5 billion.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the tax increase was hastily put together, without adequate study, to help pay for an unrelated bill. The tax increase was unveiled Thursday, without any congressional hearings to study its impact.

Even with the tax increases, the bill is projected to add $134 billion to the federal budget deficit.

"I have seen no analysis on how this would impact energy security, how this would impact domestic production, how this would impact the overall economics in the country," said Christopher Guith, vice president of the chamber's energy institute. "There hasn't been any sort of deliberation on this."

The American Petroleum Institute has not taken a position on the tax increase, though a spokeswoman said Congress should study the ramifications before acting.

"We understand we need to have an insurance policy in order to cover people in the event of a spill," said the spokeswoman, Cathy Landry. "At the same time we need to have a vital oil and gas industry."

The bill does not address a federal law that caps liability at $75 million for economic damages beyond direct cleanup costs. Democratic Senators tried to pass a bill last week that would have increased the cap to $10 billion, but they were blocked by Republicans.

The oil industry says such a high cap would make it difficult, if not impossible, to insure oil rigs.

BP said Monday its costs for responding to the spill had grown to about $760 million.

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I told all uh yall in an earlier post that the consumers were going to pay for all of this.

The consumer always pays for everything. Always.

No doubt, especially in the oil industry. But it was bad enough that BP has that much to pay in clean up- we were already going to swallow that. Now ALL oil gets taxed.

jimdana1942 said:

I told all uh yall in an earlier post that the consumers were going to pay for all of this.

The consumer always pays for everything. Always.

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Exactly. Businesses don't absorb costs, they pass them along. Minimum wage goes up, prices go up, i.e. the Dollar Menu double cheeseburger loses one slice of cheese and becomes the McDouble. Consumers are going to pay for the cost of the spill regardless of any tax passed by Congress.

BP and friends should be paying for the cleanup.

bs875 said:

Exactly. Businesses don't absorb costs, they pass them along. Minimum wage goes up, prices go up, i.e. the Dollar Menu double cheeseburger loses one slice of cheese and becomes the McDouble. Consumers are going to pay for the cost of the spill regardless of any tax passed by Congress.

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That's exactly how it goes....

Thought this was interesting too:

How the White House destroyed the Gulf

Posted: May 25, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
By William Hunt
© 2010
Rahm Emmanuel said it himself: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."
But why continue a crisis or allow a matter to become a crisis through inaction?
One must conclude that the White House wanted the oil spill to continue and wreak havoc on the Gulf coasts of Louisiana and Florida. Nothing substantive was done to stop the spread. A great deal of talking, but nothing more.
No serious effort was made by the U.S. government to stop the flow of oil, whatsoever, despite it being in its power to do so. Few entities have the ability to do anything at 5,000 feet in depth, and the U.S. government is one of the few that can. Despite this, it was more than a week before any NOAA ships sailed.
No submersibles capable of dumping rock or concrete onto the spill and covering it over (like a cairn) were dispatched to stop the flood of oil. If one piles enough rock and/or concrete upon such a well, the weight of the overburden will stop the flow– inelegant, but it would work. No submarines fired wire-guided ADCAP torpedoes into the seabed surrounding the well to break up the concrete and the surrounding rock. Also inelegant, but if the pipe and surrounding rock were broken up badly enough – remember the pressure involved – it would also stop the flow of oil.
Absolutely nothing of substance has been done by the U.S. government to stop the gusher.
All the government has done is to talk about the disaster. To complain. To point fingers. To pontificate. It doesn't accomplish much.
The spill was not even a priority. Department of the Interior chief of staff Tom Strickland elected to go on vacation in the Grand Canyon, which effectively showed how much the administration cared about the matter. Imagine if one of President Bush's top federal employees had done the same thing. We'd still be hearing about it a year from now from CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC and other networks, using such phrases as "dereliction of duty."
However, because those media support this administration, the White House is given a pass.
Even preventing the oil from reaching shore has been a matter of talk and no action. Talk was made of starting the oil on fire (not the best option, but better than nothing) and various measures suggested, but little was done.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal asked the government to have the Corps of Engineers push sand into the interstices between the barrier islands as a temporary barrier to oil. It would have been relatively inexpensive and would have prevented the oil from reaching the Louisiana coastline. It was ignored.
Now the oil is on the coastline. Birds, plants, frogs, fish and other creatures are dying. Fisheries will be ruined for at least two to three years after the oil is finally stopped.
So, to recap: We have a federal government that didn't and hasn't acted decisively to stop the flow of oil, didn't act to prevent that oil from reaching the coastline, and now we have an ecological disaster. While the initial responsibility is on the oil companies (assuming the initial explosion and failure of safety equipment was not sabotage), the final responsibility is on President Obama as he had the power all along to stop the disaster from happening at several points and adamantly refused to act. That is on his shoulders.
Funny how this type of inaction by the president resulting in an ecological disaster is OK, but we still hear about Katrina, which was the result of the inaction of the then-governor of Louisiana, the city of New Orleans and, most importantly, the citizens of New Orleans – but President Bush was constantly harangued in the media as if their mistakes were somehow his fault.
Then there is still the possibility that the disaster was deliberate from the onset. Why didn't the safeguards work? They were multilayered and proven to work on other rigs, having prevented spills for years. Why at same time did a nuclear power plant in New Jersey have a leak? When the president recommends oil and nuclear and then both have disasters, it is unlikely to be a coincidence, particularly when the White House does nothing to stop the oil disaster. Will they also do nothing to stop the problem with the power plant? Only time will tell.

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

William Hunt is a former NOAA scientist and a former Corps of Engineers materials engineering tech. He holds degrees in environmental education, geology and civil engineering technology.

$134B to the federal deficit? That's a load of crap. This should be on BP, Transocean, and Horizon, and it sure as hell won't cost $134B.

"Now let me be clear on this.........If you make less than $250,000.00 you WILL NOT pay 1 more dime in taxes!!!!!!!!"

Paintball do you have a link for that? I want to smear it in a few liberals faces, the ones saying spill baby, spill.

Paintball said:

Thought this was interesting too:

How the White House destroyed the Gulf

<SNIP>

No submersibles capable of dumping rock or concrete onto the spill and covering it over (like a cairn) were dispatched to stop the flood of oil. If one piles enough rock and/or concrete upon such a well, the weight of the overburden will stop the flow– inelegant, but it would work. No submarines fired wire-guided ADCAP torpedoes into the seabed surrounding the well to break up the concrete and the surrounding rock. Also inelegant, but if the pipe and surrounding rock were broken up badly enough – remember the pressure involved – it would also stop the flow of oil.

<SNIP>

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Do people seriously believe that the quoted "solutions" are effective at plugging a well? When you read these streams of BS, please try and imagine what kind of pressure comes up the well when you drill down several miles. The BOP is designed for something like 15,000 psi. Yeah, a pile of rocks and a mangled pipe will seal that off.

Just my humble opinion there...

Foreign oil should be taxed $250 per barrel, that will cover the cost of military protection

Geardo said:

Foreign oil should be taxed $250 per barrel, that will cover the cost of military protection

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That won't do anything but cost the consumer more money.

The president and congress don't scare me as much as the idiots who elected them and will probably do so again!

BBQLS1 said:

BP and friends should be paying for the cleanup.

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BP IS paying for this - they have accepted full responsibility for this from the beginning. And what does "and friends" mean?

hdfinder47 said:

BP IS paying for this - they have accepted full responsibility for this from the beginning. And what does "and friends" mean?

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Obama?

I wish...

CloudStrife said:

$134B to the federal deficit? That's a load of crap. This should be on BP, Transocean, and Horizon, and it sure as hell won't cost $134B.

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See my earlier post - BP IS paying for this. I assume that the $134B deficit would come from the negative impact that this newest TAX will have on the overall economy. We will pay at the gas pump and we will pay when we buy anything that is hydrocarbon based (which is a lot). We are calling our reps now to ask them to stop this spending / taxing frenzy. Please do the same.

hdfinder47 said:

See my earlier post - BP IS paying for this. I assume that the $134B deficit would come from the negative impact that this newest TAX will have on the overall economy. We will pay at the gas pump and we will pay when we buy anything that is hydrocarbon based (which is a lot). We are calling our reps now to ask them to stop this spending / taxing frenzy. Please do the same.

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I know BP and co are paying for it now, as they should be. Obama wants to dump it on us.

mct601 said:

Paintball do you have a link for that? I want to smear it in a few liberals faces, the ones saying spill baby, spill.

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http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=157901

As consumers, we will pay in increased prices and now the government wants us to pay through extra taxes as well, Uncle Sam doesn't want to miss a shot at more of our dollars. F#@king recockulous!