Markos rips into Clinton today for supporting McCain's idea of a "Summer Gas Tax Holiday": One thing that Markos and almost every commenter is missing, is that the oil companies already owe the U.S. taxpayers more than $10 billion in uncollected royalties for petroleum removed from public lands.
Honestly, why take the 18 cents out of the federal budget? Why not take it out of the oil company profits? The $10 billion in revenue the federal government would lose, at a time when our roads are crumbling and bridges literally collapsing, is only a quarter of Exxon Mobil's annual profits...And that's just Exxon Mobile, excluding every other Big Oil company. Add them all up, and $10 billion would be but a blip in their balance sheet. So why do McCain and Clinton want to penalize the federal government at a time of record oil profits?
And when you realize that some estimates put the figure at $31 billion it really makes you wonder, why don't we have a $0.36/gallon gas tax break and let the oil companies pay for it out of the money they already owe the taxpayers?