Barbarian, No matter the reason for the credit, it is tax payer dollors going to pay for something that is the companies responsibility. If you believe in the free market ideology, you can't also believe in government supplimenting business. And it makes no difference as to why.
Oh, and anyone who uses the American non-Thinker can never, ever complain about a source, as any source, no matter how wild, beats the American non-Thinker. :lamo :lamo
Now, I did not single out oil companies, but spoke of corporate welfare on the whole. Your job would be to show that either such is just and a proper expensive of tax payer money, which to me means you're arguing that all we need to spend is a reason you like, or that we really don't have any corporate welfare of any significant sixe, which I think would be contrary to actual evidence.
Average taxpayers pick up an expensive tab for corporate welfare expenditures. Government spending for corporate welfare programs far exceeds government spending for social programs.
1.Fact: Spending for corporate welfare programs outweighs spending for low-income programs by more than three to one: $167 billion to $51.7 billion (source: Aid for Dependent Corporations, from the Corporate Welfare Project and How Much Do We Spend on Welfare?, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, FY 95 figures)
2.Fact: Total federal spending on a safety net for the poor costs the average taxpayer about $400 a year, while spending on corporate welfare programs costs the same taxpayer about $1400 a year. (source: CBO figures)
Corporate welfare programs are protected at the expense of the poor and powerless. In the last Congress, spending for the needy absorbed the majority of spending cuts, while corporate welfare spending was barely touched.
1.Fact: Over 90% of the budget cuts passed by the last Congress cut spending for the poor -- programs that ensure food for the needy, housing for the homeless, job training for the unemployed, community health care for the sick. (source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Bearing Most of the Burden, 1996).
2.Fact: Only 3.9% of total federal outlays go to programs that solely benefit poor people.
Welfare programs for corporations do not play by the same rules as welfare for people. Welfare benefits for individuals and families are limited by strict eligibility requirements and time limits, while corporations get corporate welfare benefits regardless of wealth or accountability.
1.Fact: Individuals and families must demonstrate need to receive benefits, while corporations with billions of dollars in annual income remain on the federal dole.
2.Fact: Most social spending is in the form of discretionary spending, which is scrutinized in the annual budget negotiating process in Congress; most corporate welfare programs are in the form of tax expenditures, which go on and on since they are not subject to annual review by Congress.
Facts on Corporate Welfare | OMB Watch
In the wake of an earlier round of bank bailouts presided over by George H.W. Bush, I published a short piece in Newsweek entitled “Welfare Bankers” (sadly, the magazine’s digital archives do not extend to October 16-17, 1989). Protesting the moral double standard applied to bankers and to welfare mothers, I argued that the bankers whose institutions were bailed out at a cost of about $156 billion (what a deal compared to today’s bailout!) could perhaps be retrained as child care workers.
In the decade that followed this financial debacle, we could have gotten banking reform. Instead, we got welfare reform. Stricter work requirements and time limits were imposed. The welfare rolls declined sharply. Participation in the TANF program has fallen by half since 1996.
Welfare reform was heralded as a great success because it got so many of our female “troubled assets” off the rolls. But in addition to some unanticipated side effects (which I’ll describe in a future post), it was premised on the assumption that single mothers would be able to find work if they just tried hard enough.
Welfare for Bankers - NYTimes.com
As for those oil companies:
However, the Bush budget proposal also increases some of the largest corporate welfare programs, such as federal aid to oil companies through the fossil energy research and development program and research subsidies to aerospace companies as well as increases for the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the Foreign Agriculture Service, and the Conservation Reserve Program.
The Corporate Welfare Budget: Bigger Than Ever
And that has probably emboldened Congress -- which, instead of investigating oil companies, just handed them (by various estimates) anywhere from $1.4 billion to $4 billion in tax breaks in the new energy bill.
Still, inquiring minds want to know: Isn't there something wrong when firms profit so richly from the misfortune of the U.S. economy and American consumers?
How Those Big Bucks End Up in Big Oil's Pockets