What Energy Bill?

As a confirmed "numbers person", it has always been my opinion that if you want to see the motivation of many people (especially Republicans) look at the dollars involved. I've felt this way even before Mark Felt told Woodward and Bernstein to "follow the money" to discover the facts behind the last, totally corrupt, presidential administration. While everyone has been agitated this past week about CAFTA passing, no one paid much attention to the new energy bill. While there is the legitimate issues of whether it will cost jobs in the US, CAFTA will have little, if any, effect on most Americans given the small amount of trade ($15 billion) that we do with Central American countries. The energy bill is a much diffferent case. What little discussion we heard from TV's talking heads was about how daylight savings time will be extended to Halloween. No one talks about how this bill is the bastard child of the secret meetings Cheney held with energy executives right after Bush was first appointed by the Supreme Court. These meetings were so secret that the administration fought for years through the courts to even keep secret who was at the meeting! It took Republicans almost five years to get this bill passed, during a period in which they had control of Congress and the nation clearly expressed a desire to have a strong energy policy. How bad can this bill be if it took this long? How big a theft from the US treasury can be involved here? Follow the money...

So what do the numbers show? How about $14.5 billion in tax breaks for energy companies. Well, that doesn't seem so bad. After all, with a current population of over 296 million, that works out to $48.85 each for every man, woman, and child in this country. That seems like a small price to pay for a strong, balanced energy policy. And you know, it WOULD be a good deal. Unfortunately, this money will do almost nothing to strengthen US energy policy...but it WILL do wonders for the profits of oil companies. I wonder if any of them were present in Cheney's hideout for the secret meetings? Guess we'll never know for sure! But wait, let's be fair my Republicans friends (yeah, I have some!) will say. These tax breaks have to go to the oil companies. Otherwise, they won't explore for new oil or expand refinery capability so they can sell us more $3 a gallon gas. Well, that certainly understandable a position to take (if you get major PAC money from oil companies). After all, in the second quarter, Exxon Mobil had net profits (that's NET, after all expnses are paid, this is what goes back into their big pockets) of only $7.64 billion (yup, BILLION). Since this net profit only amounted to $84,888,889 per DAY that quarter, one can see why they would be hesitant to invest any of that money in order to drill a little deeper (or in the National Wildlife Refuge) for more oil to make even more money. And why should they spend any of their money, when with a few well-spent piddling millions, you can buy enough politicians to get the federal taxpayers to pay you billions. Many wondered in 1999, why a group of seemingly smart oil and gas people would lead the charge to raise millions of dollars to run the neer-do-well son of a failed president as their candidate. Oh, how that investment has paid off for them!