I have heard several of the political pundits yammer about the windfall-profits tax, which ostensibly would penalize oil companies. These folks don’t seem to recall what happened the last time such a bill was passed by our federal government.
Jimmy Carter’s keystone national energy policy was a similar windfall-profits tax bill. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now. Carter’s bill actually grew our dependence on foreign oil by about 10 percent. If it passed now, the bill would cripple this country even more because now our nation imports a larger percentage of its petroleum. History has shown us that penalizing American companies isn’t the answer to achieving energy independence.
Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s vote against the windfall-profit tax bill protected North Carolina and now, thankfully, history will not repeat itself. We really don’t need to be more dependent on foreign oil.
Thanks, Sen. Dole for remembering the past so we’re not doomed to repeat it.
— Vicky Wynn
Asheville
No matter how bad the economy get we always have those that are rushing to the defense of the poor struggling oil companies.
Of course we should not ever consider asking the oil companies to pay their fair share and we should thank Senator Elizabeth for looking out for the interests of the oil companies. Bush and Cheney pushed for huge tax breaks for the oil companies and I would not be surprised if Senator Dole was pushing right along with them.
Our record debt and the oil company’s record profits are really not a coincidence.
Basic economics tells us that a tax on anything will lower demand and taking the revenues and helping out those that are at the end of their rope in these hard times would be the right thing to do but it’s hard to compete with the political influence of the oil companies.