CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

Energy Companies Need a No Subsidies Plan B. The debt deal did not cut renewable energy subsidies but it set up a super committee of Congress that must produce $1.3 trillion in spending cuts by Thanksgiving 2011. This sets up a ruthless competition between all the special interest causes that now get subsidies or tax supported benefits. Mothers and grandmothers will be sacrificed by the lobbyists on K Street to keep their subsidies—the only question is who’s.

EIA Study of Energy Subsidies

Last November, 2010 several members of Congress asked US Energy Information Service to update the study of direct Federal support and subsidies for energy done in 2008. But the Members of Congress requesting the update directed that the study include only energy-specific benefits with measurable budget impact. That updated study found that direct Federal intervention and subsidies for energy have doubled from 2007 to 2010 from $17.9 billion to $37.2 billion.

But the political game played by that narrow definition was to exclude oil and gas tax benefits the President has sought unsuccessfully to cut in the debt deal. In May 2011, Congress rejected Democrat proposals to cut $21 billion in oil and gas industry subsidies. Crying foul, Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups filed a Freedom of Information Act request with EIA demanding an update of the subsidies for oil and natural gas that had been excluded from the updated 2010 report.

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