Guest essay by Eric Worrall
President Obama has proposed a $10 per barrel carbon tax to fund renewable energy, and to “encourage” people to stop using oil.
From the Whitehouse Statement;
For too long, bipartisan support for innovative and expansive transportation investment has not been accompanied by a long-term plan for paying for it. We need a sustainable funding solution that takes into account the integrated, interdependent nature of our transportation system. Travelers choose between walking, biking, driving, flying, and taking the train; and companies choose between trucks, barges, airplanes and rail lines. So to meet our needs in the future, we have to make significant investments across all modes of transportation. And our transportation system is heavily dependent on oil. That is why we are proposing to fund these investments through a new $10 per barrel fee on oil paid by oil companies, which would be gradually phased in over five years. The fee raises the funding necessary to make these new investments, while also providing for the long-term solvency of the Highway Trust Fund to ensure we maintain the infrastructure we have. By placing a fee on oil, the President’s plan creates a clear incentive for private sector innovation to reduce our reliance on oil and at the same time invests in clean energy technologies that will power our future.
Why does the green version of “encouragement” always seem to involve beating ordinary people with price hikes until they comply?
If the President really wants to encourage green energy, why doesn’t he announce a tax holiday for profits made from green innovations? I doubt there would be any worthwhile innovations; making renewables affordable is an intractable problem. But at least a tax holiday wouldn’t hurt anyone. A tax holiday would stimulate interest and investment, while allowing ordinary people to continue to enjoy low oil prices.
A federal spending plan and the word ‘sustainable’ don’t belong in the same universe.
Tax and spend and spend and spend and…
You know I’m just wondering if President Obama is deliberately trying to hang an albatross around the neck of who ever winds up being the democratic candidate for president.
They are going to have to defend this, Gee I’m running for president and I support YOU paying more for tank of gas.
Yup that will be a sure vote getter. Think of Bernie, with his I’m going to tax the top 1%. Both Bernie & Hillary where up there tonight carrying on on how they’ll help the mid-class, and take on Wall-street etc. And Bozo just stabbed them in the back, not with a simple knife mind you, but with a Macedonian sarissa
This is going to be more fun for Bernie and Hillary then the immigration raids have been.
This is going to be entertaining
michael
Does he even consider how regressive this tax is? At $30/barrel, this is a 33% surcharge across the board, rich and poor alike. Interesting that most of the time it’s “tax the rich” while this is “screw the poor”. Make up your mind, Obama.
Will love to hear Hillary defend this as anything other than an example of crony capitalism, with a bone thrown to the unions via the highway fund.
The $10 per barrel Oil (Oh! West Texas …. or or North Sea Brent! … Ha ha USA is NOW an oil EXPORTER … So is the $10 on oil IMPORTS or on ALL OIL EXPORTS! …. bummer that as Abudabi will run to North Sea Brent quick!).
Well ! Lets say this is a “E! Musk” cash back for that 2-hr ‘night’ in Paris” I.e. Obama is repaying his gay lover Elon Musk for a few minutes in Paris in December 2015.
Sad sad sad.
Barack really does not know how to repay his gay lovers with Federal monies from the IRS! Ha haa
So
Barak du!
Well. The Senate and House will … Ignore such a bald face crime.
Even a petty Felony crime against the peoples of the USA and a Crime Against Humanity against the peoples of World … who Obama hates with …. Gay sucking.
Ha ha
Of course the $10 a barrel tax is in addition to the 48.69 cent fuel tax on each gallon of gasoline.
OMG…now the big bad oil companies won’t be able to afford paying all of us “DENIERS” !!
Fortunately this is one thing he can’t do through executive action.
The Republican Congress response was “Go pound sand.”
When Obama starts to say “let me be clear”, you know for sure that he is setting the ground for another lie.
The story’s leading picture of Obama forced me to scroll down rapidly to avoid nausea. This Obama idea is just yet again tax grab by Socialists who find that they are yet again running out of other people’s money.
agree 100%. Obama makes me nauseous at what he is doing to destroy this country and the constitution h swore to uphold.
Obama?
“LEGOLAAAS!! BRING HIM DOWN!!!”
The difference between the Demolicans and the Republicrats is that one side says, ” step 1 tax the rich”, “step 2 bribe the middle class”, “step 3 screw the poor”, “step 4 enrich my buddies”, while the other side skips steps one and two.
Under Obama’s steady hand, the Democrats have lost majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. My guess is that Democrat politicians will be glad to see the back of him.
Although if Sanders gains the presidency, their problems have just begun.
So Obama wants to tax oil by about one third at today’s price. Then he will continue to tax the gasoline made from that oil. It will be a tax on a tax designed to make the price of fuel skyrocket. It also seems to be designed to prepare the way for a value-added tax where taxes are added to products at each stage of its production. Do these “progressives” ever think of anything other that how to get more money out of taxpayer pockets? I’d rather give my money to big oil than big government. At least big oil provides a useful product that they don’t force me to buy.
Louis. Good point about the tax on tax. When I sold gasoline in Indiana in the late sixties a sales tax of 2% was levied on nearly everything except necessities. There was already a 4 cent federal and 8 cent per gal state tax on gas so the sales tax had to be calculated on only the part that wasn’t tax. It was a pain in the rear to add the sales tax to the dollar figure displayed on the pump. The price of the gas was 32 cent for regular and 34 for eythel. I made 1.60 dollars per hour or in other words 1.6/0.32 = 5 gallons per hour.
601nan needs to seriously calm down.
Nah he is just jealous.
seconded
Okay Now that I live in sunny AZ I don’t that often of home heating oil.
After a quick check HHO prices in New England range from a low of $1.375 in Maine to over $2.00 a Gal. in most of the states. Heating bills in winter can be $400. to $800 per month. and President Obama wants to increase this cost.
Oh and all those obscene profits the oil companies are making?
This is BP.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/02/bp-annual-loss-biggest-for-20-years-axes-thousands-of-jobs-deepwater
And now Shell
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35490364
michael
Obama’s response will be — Road trip! Like the boys in Animal House.
Let’s see $10/bbl oil tax x 20 million bbl/day x 365 days/yr= an oil tax of around $73 BILLION/year.
This insane tax will increase the cost of EVERYTHING from increased transportation costs, lower living standards, cost millions of jobs from decreased competitiveness, decrease corporate profits, increase debt, decrease wages, limit capital investments, etc.
All these detrimental consequences will occur for absolutely NO good reason whatsoever. It’s just the government stealing more money and increasing control over our daily lives…
Let’s say we elect a new president that wants to: decreased government spending, lower taxes, balance the Federal budget, decrease the size of government, decrease government rules and regulations and wants to eliminate the IRS with a flat tax…
I’m sick of this Leftist insanity.
This is the coveted Energy Tax every administration in every nation has wished for as there is nothing produced in any country that does not use energy. That is a universal tax everyone within a nation everyone contributes to. Rich or poor – no matter, Obama will be in your pocket. And he will be long gone by the time those who are bad at math figure it out. The energy companies won’t notice it – why should they? It is just one more operating expense they pass on to the sheeple that suck this stuff up. They would be the sheeple who rejoice because they think he’s sticking it to big oil. That ain’t watts happening by a long shot. But it may help fund his unconditional opening up of the borders. Oh wait – there’s all that new deficit spending that my great-great grandchildren get to pay for. Sorry, no upside to this new rogue activity.
When the carbon tax that Gillard here in Australia said she would not implement got implemented (On electricity only) the price of electricity to industry and domestic consumers, strangely enough, went up in my case about 7%. We were told that the carbon tax on power would not be passed on to consumers only the big polluters would pay. And, not so strange, is profits went UP for power generators. When the carbon tax was abolished by Abbott, my power bill went down by about 7%. Hummmm…funny that!
The lack of cheep reliable energy, including oil, will be the downfall of your USA.
I think that’s Obama’s end game.
I think the bloke is a bloody idiot.
That, plus he really, really just hates America.
Tax the corp and unless there is a corresponding import duty on gasoline, there is no change in consumption, just an incentive and enrichment to import. Transfers of wealth are the progressive way.
If you tax the corp, unless there is a corresponding tariff on the import of crude products there will be no change in consumption, just a transfer of wealth to other producing jurisdictions. The classic progressive wealth transfer.
Dear Mr Worell,
I am an assiduis reader of all your excellent articles on this wonderful website.
One think really sticks in my craw though.
Why oh why does your good self fall into the greenies trap of referring to the trace gas of creation as “carbon”
I realise that I am a carbon unit, and all living objects are likewise, but the plant food I exhale is called carbon dioxide, and when barmy O’Barma, and Mizz Gillard refer to Co2 as carbon, it is a deliberate propaganda ploy to deamonise it.
Sorry about the rant, but age and grumpiness are correleated, unlike Co2 and ambient temperature(s).
Kind regards from the Scottish Gulag.
Its a kind of literary shorthand. If I write “carbon tax”, everyone immediately knows exactly what I mean, even though the literal meaning of “carbon tax” is not a concise representation of what I am describing. Don’t worry, my grandpa and I used to debate the correct use of language – fond memories :-).
Do we tax the Carbon in biofuels and ethanol?
“waterside4
February 5, 2016 at 12:26 am
…and Mizz Gillard refer to Co2 as carbon, it is a deliberate propaganda ploy to deamonise it.”
She is “married” so the Mizz label is, well garbage. Bit like Helen Clark in New Zealand. She never said carbon. She said cahbohn because she was “tutored” in her speeches and those speech writers were clueless idiots! Mind you, she is from Barry in Wales, UK. That’s where old steamers go to get junked! I wish she’d go there!
Similafly spelling Mr Worrall and thing not think…….back to “skool” for me!
tax enough already
It probably is an honorable goal – to get all those gas guzzlers off of the road.
Maybe also – to get the cash guzzlers out of politics.
His big idea – to steal money from productive industry and hand it to hypothetical ones that only ever looked good in the promotional literature.
So Exxon pays for Solyndra.
Brilliant thinking, because who needs real practical energy delivered at the point of use, when we can enjoy the fruits of dumb and unworkable pipe-dreams funded using other people’s money by scientifically illiterate politicians? (sarc)
I forgot to mention Solyndra version II. a.k.a. Abengoa.
Currently in progress. This from 17hours ago. (link below).
It’s actually surprising that these players can not survive, considering that the market has been rigged heavily in their favor with extraordinarily generous subsidies that represent multiples of the real market value of the thing that they trade. Supposedly electricity, but actually they trade in self-promotion and promises.
http://www.reuters.com/article/abengoa-restructuring-idUSL8N15J4SM
in other words: hidden taxes? we don’t need no sinken hidden taxes.
so if you tax domestic oil companies this only helps the likes of Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.
As well as increasing the cost of manufacturing causing even more mfg. to move to places like China.
What a fabulous foreign policy idea.
Yeah, you can bet that this suggestion will be popular on Al Jazeera and Russia Today.
Environmental alarmism and crushing western oil and gas independence are their favorite topics.
Presented in various no so subtle guises.
Well now that is NOT what is being proposed. The basic idea is to subsidize electric cars and public transportation using a $10 per barrel tax on ALL oil used. The detailed implementation is likely to be extraordinarily complex and require a whole heap of bureaucrats to administer. One issue is that a LOT of gasoline is imported while there are considerable exports of diesel fuel.
Another is does the $10 per barrel rule apply to all oil usage , that would be a burden on those dependent on oil for heating for example. The tax is clever in only one regard. The big losers will be poor people who live n rural areas who will see their bills rise and get no benefit. These people however tend to vote Republican so Obama s=doesn’t care. The big winners will be those who live in cities and will get new federally subsidized jobs AND cheaper pubic transit. They of course happen to be Democrat’s by and large.
In short this is a naked attempt to bribe potential democratic voters, the fact that on a global scale it will penalize US industry and agriculture by imposing costs on them that competitors do not have to bear is irrelevant. Tammany Hall rules apply in the Whitehouse today.
State cap-and-trades could also include natural gas which will impact urban dwellers with increased taxes for household uses.
What do you expect? He has proven favors Iran over the US Citizen anyway.
Is this few to be levied on imported oil, or only on oil produced in the USA?
I meant fee
Another Bright idea from a socialist, don’t ya just love how they spend your money’s
These people never stop: Thursday, February 4, 2016, 2:56 PM – Ice coverage on the Great Lakes is near record-low levels for this time of year, and scientists are concerned about the effect this will have on wildlife species in the months to come. But not one word about this: http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/new/us-windfarms-kill-10-20-times-more-than-previously-thought.html
DEFINITION of ‘Free Enterprise’ An economic system where few restrictions are placed on business activities and ownership. In this system, governments generally have minimal ownership of enterprises in the market place. This system aims for limited restrictions on trade and minimal government intervention.If this Green Movement is so great why doesn’t free markets jump all over this concept and raise the money.
http://time.com/9480/great-lakes-frozen-time-lapse-video/ How come when the Great Lakes were frozen over in 2013 and 14 not a word .
Great Lakes levels depend on which way the wind is blowing. When frozen over the water doesn’t move around or more stable?