The Oil Companies Should Pick Up the Tab, Not the Public

Markos rips into Clinton today for supporting McCain's idea of a "Summer Gas Tax Holiday":

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?

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.

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?