Making subsidy reform stick

  Fossil-fuel subsidies impose a significant economic and environmental burden around the world, distorting markets and draining national budgets. In recent years, the total cost of fossil-fuel consumption subsidies worldwide has ranged from $480 billion to $630 billion per year, plus more than $100 billion spent every year in production subsidies.

The Ryan budget is a broken record of failed trickle-down economics

  For the past three years, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has been trotting out the same conservative, top-down policies that have failed the nation’s middle- and working-class families, seniors, and the economy. The House Republican budget is built around the tenet that nearly everyone else must sacrifice in order to continue to give billions of dollars in tax breaks to millionaires, big corporations, and Big Oil. At every turn, the House Republican budget reveals its vision of an economy and government that only works for the wealthiest individuals and special corporate interests at the cost of everyone else.

With only $93 billion in profits, the big five oil companies demand to keep tax breaks

  The 2013 profit totals are in for the big five oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Shell. Their financial reports indicate that they earned a combined total of $93 billion last year, or $177,000 per minute. After years of oil production declines, the big five oil companies actually increased their total production in 2013, predominately due to BP and ConocoPhillips almost doubling their total production. The companies’ higher oil production yet lower profits indicate that it is becoming more expensive to produce oil as the number of newer, easier, and cheaper fields shrink. This is why, despite their outsized earnings, the oil companies are not only fighting to keep their tax breaks but also lobbying to lift the crude oil export ban. But doing so could hurt working families, our economy, and our energy security. Instead, we need to invest in cleaner transportation alternatives.

Jesse C. Moore: Should the United States subsidize fossil fuel companies?

  The world needs a reliable supply of energy. To ensure that, many countries have granted subsidies and tax breaks to fossil fuel companies to help develop energy resources. However, with the concern over our carbon emissions and over the economic crises that many countries are facing, the wisdom of continuing those subsidies needs to be examined. The fossil fuel companies are now quite profitable. The five most profitable companies in the United States are Ford ($20 billion), Microsoft ($23.2 billion), Apple ($25.9 billion), Chevron ($26.9 billion), and Exxon Mobil ($41.1 billion). The two most profitable companies are oil companies with Exxon Mobil greatly exceeding the profitability of the other four.