Red “Potatoe”
by digby
A very thick young GOP politician talking about oil companies at time of high gas prices:
CONSTITUENT: I’d like to know why you’d like to do this on the backs of seniors, and of women. All the cuts are going to hurt seniors, future seniors, and women! Your attacks on Planned Parenthood are hurting women who need healthcare. […] And why are you are choosing that way rather than cutting oil subsidies […]
QUAYLE: In terms of the oil subsidies, if we’re going to address it, can you just tell me what oil subsidies you’re talking about so I could have better information on what to expand on it?
CONSTITUENT: Why were the oil companies coming to defend their subsidies in front of the Senate? Those subsidies, anything in which we give them money when they’re making billions off of us every day.
AUDIENCE: That’s right!
QUAYLE: The things they were talking about were actually tax deductions that corporations across all sorts of sectors take in terms of R&D, in terms of equipment deductions, the life of the equipment, those were the deductions that they were talking about and it’s not specific to the oil industry […]
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
He’s just an idiot who doesn’t know how to deliver his talking points. But they are tough ones to deliver. The Republicans are trying to set the stage for the protection of “tax expenditures” for their favored industries and this is obviously the line they are going to use — these subsidies and loopholes are “deductions” just like the ones you took on your income tax returns last year for those books and old clothes you gave to the Salvation Army.
The Dems are taking the tack that the massively profitable oil companies are the designated bad guys on this who are doing something uniquely evil. In that sense, Quayle is perfectly correct — they aren’t. There are hundreds of corporations taking advantage of the tax code to boost their profits without offering anything in return to the country. It will be interesting to see how that plays out in the coming budget battles. Already we are seeing the oil patch Democrats like Begich and Landrieu are backing away from the oil company critique.
This is the problem with agreeing to cut “tax expenditures” in exchange for cutting the so-called “entitlements.” The politicians are probably all willing to do this in the abstract. After all, the Republicans can call them spending cuts and the Democrats can call them tax increases — what could be more perfect? But it’s far more complicated to do it in reality. It’s pretty to think that they really will take a balanced approach to revenue and spending, but it’s probably a good idea to keep an eye on what they actually do.
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