This, something pretty much every liberal the last few decades has proposed, will be hailed as courage:
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan called for ending oil subsidies Thursday, further complicating Republican efforts to stay on message about rising gas prices.
The Wisconsin Republican told constituents at a Waterford, Wis., town hall meeting that he agreed that federal oil subsidies ought to end.
“We’re talking about reforming the safety net, the welfare system; we also want to get rid of corporate welfare. And corporate welfare goes to agribusiness companies, energy companies, financial services companies, so we propose to repeal all that,” Ryan said in response to a question about oil subsidies.
A video of Ryan’s town hall meeting was circulated by Think Progress, a blog run by the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund.
In a statement to POLITICO, Ryan’s office said the House-passed budget resolution “clearly states that as part of an overall corporate tax reform, tax loopholes and deductions for all corporations should be scaled back or eliminated entirely. That obviously includes oil companies. Elsewhere, we state that subsidies for all energy companies need to be reduced or eliminated so that we can get government out of the business of picking winners and losers in the market.”
Ryan’s comments come as Republicans are trying to quell the political furor caused when House Speaker John Boehner left the door open to hiking taxes on oil and gas companies, telling ABC News Monday that Congress “certainly oughta take a look at it.”
Democrats quickly pounced on the opportunity, issuing statements commending Boehner for seeing the light on the issue.
Welcome aboard.
As a side note, every time I get frustrated with Obama and some of the things he is doing that I adamantly disagree with, I usually will pop off at the mouth here on the blog, and then a short while later cool down and realize the environment he is operating in. Only in our truly screwed up times could Ryan suggesting we end subsidies to oil be somehow considered courageous. Oil companies are wildly profitable, will remain so, all the while creating catastrophic disasters to our environment, and doing so producing a product we should be discouraging and will eventually be replaced. In no sane world would they ever be subsidized- it’s simply insane. And smarter folks have been pointing this out for quite some time, and are simply ignored.
But now that a Republican has suggested it, I guess it is “serious” enough that something might happen.