Note: This evening at 7 PM EST, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will be speaking at the Economic Club of New York on Jobs, Debt, Gas Prices. Americans can view the speech live via the Speaker's Facebook Page. We will report the text of his full speech after the event.
The Senate reconvened at 2 PM today and Vice President Joe Biden swore in Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) as the junior senator from Nevada.At 4:30 PM, the Senate will take up the nomination of James Cole to be Deputy Attorney General. Following an hour of debate, the Senate will vote on cloture on the Cole nomination.
ICYMI, The US House last week passed 251-175 a government-wide permanent ban on tax-funded abortions. The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (H.R. 3). House Speaker John Boehner said the legislation sends a strong message to the Obama administration and Democrats in the Senate that Americans want an end to abortion funding. “A ban on taxpayer funding of abortions is the will of the people, and it ought to be the will of the land.”
The bill faced a much more difficult time in the Senate. The Senate Democratic leaders don't want to bring the measure up for a stand-alone vote. If the bill were to pass the Senate, President Obama has already indicated that he opposes the bill which only stops Federal funding of abortions. He claims to be for "women's reproductive freedoms" including using tax-payer money to kill babies to support women and men to be free to use abortion as a alternative to responsible behavior. Obama's liberal pro-death advisers have indicated that they will encourage the president to veto H.R. 3 if it comes to his desk. Killing babies (American's future) is okay but slapping a terrorist is a crime.
The New York Times reports today, “Linking two of the politically volatile issues of the moment, Senate Democrats say they will move forward this week with a plan that would eliminate tax breaks for big oil companies and divert the savings to offset the deficit. . . . ‘Big Oil certainly doesn’t need the collective money of taxpayers in this country,’ said Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the authors of the legislation that Democrats intend to showcase. ‘This is as good a time as any in terms of pain at the pump and in revenues needed for deficit reduction.’”
Yet Democrats have failed to explain how raising taxes on energy producers will do anything for Americans feeling the financial pinch of higher gas prices. In a statement to the NYT, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Instead of returning again and again to tax hikes that increase consumers’ costs, the administration and its Democrat allies in Congress should open their eyes to the vast energy resources we have right here at home and to the hundreds of thousands of jobs that opening them up could create.”
In fact, according to a March report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a similar proposal to the Senate Democrats’ tax hike proposed in President Obama’s original budget would be more likely to increase gas prices. CRS wrote, “[T]he proposals also would make oil and natural gas more expensive for U.S. consumers and likely increase foreign dependence.”
Democrat senators from energy producing states offer similar warnings: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) said in March, “The administration has put forward draconian taxes on the oil and gas industry… It seems very contrary to our stated goal of being more energy sufficient in the United States. Taxing this domestic industry will instead cut jobs and increase our dependency on foreign oil.” And Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) said in February that tax increases on energy companies “would cost thousands of jobs in Alaska and across the country. Energy companies are among the businesses investing and creating jobs at a time when our country needs both.”
Not only that, when an amendment was offered earlier this year for just such a tax hike, it was rejected by a bipartisan majority of senators, including seven Democrats.
As Leader McConnell said the last time such tax hikes were proposed by the White House, “The President's latest call to raise taxes on U.S. energy is as predictable as it is counterproductive. If someone in the administration can show me that raising taxes on American energy production will lower gas prices and create jobs, then I will gladly discuss it. But since nobody can . . . this is merely an attempt to deflect from the policies of the past two years.”
Senate Democrats’ latest proposal for tax hikes is similarly counterproductive and unresponsive to the real problem of high gas prices. Rather, it would increase those prices for consumers and cost jobs in many states. That’s not a solution that helps American families and businesses.
Tags: US House, US Senate, Washington, D.C., increase taxes, Speaker Boehner, increase gas prices, US Energy, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
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