The energy industry.
You may think we need to tax the huge profits the oil and gas industry is making off of rising energy prices. But you're one of those librul pansies.
Real men (the type in control in Washington DC these days) know that what the energy industry needs is even more money:
The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.
Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period.
Congressman George Miller is probably not overstating the problem when he calls it "One of the greatest train robberies in the history of the world,"
After all, what train ever carried $7 billion in its safe?
