Stop ‘kicking oil companies’ write the Examiner’s editors:
It’s an election year, so it’s not surprising to hear politicians in both parties making new promises about putting Americans back to work. But it is puzzling and distressing, as the economy continues to stagnate, to hear President Obama proposing to single out domestic energy producers for blatantly discriminatory tax treatment. A new study by LSU economist Joseph Mason suggests that this proposal, contained within Obama’s 2011 budget, will lead to the loss of 155,000 jobs next year, with at least one-third of those in the already devastated Gulf Coast states. It would also result in an estimated $68 billion in lost wages nationwide, according to Mason, who used the U.S. Commerce Department’s econometric model for his projections. Another $18 billion would be lost to state and local governments.
Let us be clear, as Obama so often says: He is not proposing to close some special loophole that benefits only oil, coal and natural gas companies. Rather, he wants to exclude them — most are small to medium-sized independent operators — from tax breaks that are available to nearly every other manufacturer and producer. The first of these is the so-called “Section 199 deduction,” which allows engineering and architectural firms, software companies, construction companies, filmmakers and even members of agricultural cooperatives, among others, to deduct an amount equal to 9 percent of their production receipts on their taxes. Excluding oil and gas producers from that deduction would cost them hundreds of millions and kill thousands of desperately needed jobs.
The rest here.