I'm kind of pissed off that my tax money is going to be spent on making rich companies richer. Oil companies have been swimming in money and record profits as the price of gas has gone up(that's another post). Yet, the gov't is throwing 14.5 billion at them as tax breaks, and possibly billions more in loan gaurantees and subsidies.
However, it could be worse:
Lawmakers avoided a certain fight in the Senate by leaving out one of Bush's top energy goals: opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling. House Republicans promised to pursue that issue separately this fall.
House Republicans also abandoned a provision that would have given the makers of the gasoline additive MTBE protection against lawsuits stemming from the chemical's contamination of drinking water supplies in at least 36 states.
Both the Arctic refuge drilling and the MTBE liability shield were almost certain to have prompted a filibuster in the Senate, dooming the bill, as was the case two years ago. Congress last passed a broad energy bill in 1992. For the past six years it tried to pass another one, coming close at times, but never got the job done.
People are also getting tax credits for purchasing hybrid cars and for making homes more energy efficient. That's a good thing.
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