Bob McCarty Writes

I read in an article this morning that Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) and seven other U.S. senators are proposing a tax on major oil companies’ profits from crude oil priced at more than $50 a barrel. The goal, apparently, is to tax the so-called “excess” profits and use them to help “poor” people pay for gasoline.

As the son of an Oklahoma oil man (who could have displayed an “Oil Feeds My Family & Pays My Taxes” bumper sticker on his car, but didn’t), I know what happens in this country when liberals in Congress decide to make “Big Oil” their whipping pony. And I know this most-recent proposal, if it makes its way to becoming a law, won’t work for several reasons:

When government raises taxes on a particular type of business activity, people involved in running those businesses are forced to determine whether their business can adapt to that change or not. In Oklahoma, where I spent my first two decades of life, many owners and operators of oil-related businesses — and businesses that served the industry! — adapted by laying off 400,000 people in Oklahoma alone during the 1980s. Others couldn’t adapt and were forced to close their doors. As a result, our country became more dependent than ever on foreign sources of oil — the last thing we needed.

Senators like Casey need to realize that higher taxes on oil companies will simply be passed on to consumers — including poor consumers — in the form of higher prices at the pump. Why? Because these companies operate in a lean manner already, painfully aware of the impact past government interventions had on their industry (see above paragraph).

The stated plan to help “poor” people pay for gasoline stands simply as another leftwing liberal (a.k.a., “socialist”) attempt to redistribute wealth, and such practices don’t work. Instead, they result in generations of people becoming dependent on entitlement programs. For further proof, one can compare pre- and post-communism life in many of the former Soviet-bloc countries of Eastern Europe. There’s no comparison. Socialism doesn’t work.

Finally, the senators will tell you they are only taxing profits from oil priced at $50 a barrel or higher when, in reality, that translates to “all oil” sold. Why? A look at the history of oil prices will show you that the price of oil won’t go down until we shift to and commoditize an alternative form of fuel.

Senator Casey and his tax-loving colleagues in the U.S. Senate need to know that liberal socialist legislation like this hurts oil companies, hurts individuals and, worst of all, will do nothing to reduce our country’s dependence on foreign sources of oil. If it passes, you might find yourself wearing Will work for fuel t-shirts in the not-too-distant future.