"Oil - What I would do if I were President"

by Gary DeMar
8/06/2007

On Saturday, August 4, 2007, the House of Representatives passed a $16 billion increase in taxes on oil companies. Actually, this is a lie. Oil companies, like every company in America, see taxes as the cost of doing business. Any tax increase will be passed onto consumers. If the voting public supports this increase, then they have only voted for a tax increase on themselves.

The profits oil companies make goes to pay millions of share holders. Additionally, the money brought in from the sale of gasoline and other petroleum products is used to locate, transport, refine, and distribute. The oil industry employs tens of thousands of people, creates related support businesses, takes all the risks in drilling and transportation, pays billions of dollars in taxes, and gets blamed for gouging the consumer for unfair “profits” for delivering a volatile product safely to outlets of distribution a few miles from our homes and next to highways that criss-cross America. Government agencies, on the other hand, simply cash the checks for the taxes the gas stations collect from their customers.

The combined state and federal taxes for California is over 50 cents per gallon. The United States average is somewhere around 45 cents per gallon. With the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, you’re going to hear about taxing the oil companies even more. Here’s a question: Where have all the taxes gone that we’ve been paying every time we put gasoline in our cars? Our politicians have been spending these billions of dollars on their own pet projects to keep them in office and grow the government.

Politicians don’t want to talk about high gasoline taxes. In fact, revelations of high taxes on gasoline might anger the American public and produce sympathy for “big oil.” It would expose the fraud of “price gouging” by the oil companies. I’m hopeful if prices remain high that more people will start talking about how state and federal governments are the real problem. Maybe even some in the mainstream media will start asking lawmakers why oil profits of about ten cents per gallon are “obscene” but nearly 50 cents per gallon of taxes is . . . patriotic?

As a national security issue, as president I would declare a state of emergency and state and immediately enact the following:

Oil is the lifeblood of this economy. As a nation, we are too dependent on foreign sources for oil. As you know, the oil we need—11 million barrels a day—is located in the most hostile region in the world. While we consider a nuclear attack to be a possibility, our enemies could do far more damage by destroying the majority of oil fields in Saudi Arabia. Any disruption in the flow of oil could bring our nation to a standstill, not just economically but militarily. We would find it almost impossible to defend ourselves against domestic and foreign aggressors if gasoline supplies were jeopardized. As a result, I am issuing an Executive Order that will open up all lands and sea rights in the possession of the United States to oil exploration. In addition, I am temporarily suspending stringent environmental laws that make it nearly impossible to build and bring online new refineries. I am proposing that ten new refineries be built and running within eight years. Five of these refineries will be designed in such as way to be impervious to a military attack. The goal is to have at least a three-year supply of crude oil stored in the United States to take care of domestic and military needs as if the real possibility exists of being completely cut off from our present foreign sources. We need a Manhattan project for oil independency.

If there is a presidential candidate you are supporting, I would suggest proposing that he adopt such a policy.

Gary DeMar is President of American Vision.
P.O. Box 220, Powder Springs, GA 30127, 800-628-9460, www.americanvision.org