Posted on 06/15/2011 1:02:08 PM PDT by SmithL
Senate Democrats are making hay today with yesterdays' vote by a majority of Senate Republicans to repeal the tax credit for ethanol in defiance of Grover Norquist's "Taxpayer Protection Pledge."
Here's the e-mail blast from Chuck Schumer and Bob Menendez, with a conference call coming: "In Watershed Moment, 34 Senate Republicans Broke With Right Wing Ideology Yesterday -- Vote Means Tax Expenditures Now Fair Game To Reduce Deficit...Schumer, Menendez to Call Yesterday’s Vote 'Sea Change' That Will Boost Movement to Finally End Wasteful Oil and Gas Subsidies."
They are correct. The vote breaks GOP orthodoxy that for decades has pretended that tax subsidies are tax cuts. In fact they are spending in disguise;
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Schumer and Mendaciosnez are, as usual, full of crap. Ethanol is a horrible HORRIBLE thing to encourage, and tax breaks to promote horrible things isn't the way to go.
Tax breaks to promote GOOD things, IS, such as the tax breaks for new petroleum drilling.
But they knew that already, they are just hatin' on America, as usual.
Hey democrats, Weiner. That is all I am saying.
but didn’t they vote for it too?
Tell that to McConnell and the other traitor Republican Senators who voted for it.
Check any ethanol article at Popular Mechanics and every one is against it. Seems to me, they might know better than congresscritters.
Except most conservatives I know agree with the 34 Senate Republicans and think Norquist is off his rocker equating eliminating farm subsidies with tax increases.
And, no matter how many times they say it, the democrats will NOT convince me that tax cuts, tax breaks, tax deductions, etc. are “spending in disguise”.
That is tantamount to declaring that ALL income earned in the United States belongs to the federal government, but that each year our benevolent congress “generously” agrees to “spend” a portion of each of our incomes on us so that we may be “allowed” to keep some of what we have earned.
And that is 100% bass-ackwards!
I read up a little on ethanol fuel yesterday and apparently the refiners make ethanol free fuel - when they get to the distributors they are blended with ethanol to then go to the stations.
They are getting $0.45/gal back for ethanol fuel and there’s Fed quotas that keep going up- so E0(zero Ethanol) is becoming harder to find. If the distributors don’t hit their Fed Ethanol mark they do a ‘cap & trade’ dance - so best for them not to offer E0.
The GOP farm state senators have clearly put their personal interests and their states’ interests above the nation’s interests and the American peoples’ interests.
Special breaks, for selected groups or sectors, are indeed tantamount to spending. You are simply quibbling over the manner of the delivery of the subsidy.
If the government is determined to collect (and spend) a certain amount of tax revenue; then special breaks mean that everyone else has to pay extra.
This whole thing is nothing but a diversion — a rhetorical trap. The “breaks” given to the oil and gas industry are not the same as the tax expenditures subsidizing the ethanol industry.
I agree and Grover Norquist is an idiot.
That's how a representative republic works.
Is that like a teachable moment?
Burning food a policy?
There are Demon senators from those states too. And they didn’t want to cut the subsidies either.
umm I guess these guys never heard of the Flat Tax?
“There are Demon senators from those states too. And they didn’t want to cut the subsidies either.”
does that mean that they broke from left wing ideology?
They love subsidies for the farmer.
'Petroleum'-Ethanol = 100% ethanol, 0% water.
Guess which one the government is subsidizing?
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