Last year, the top six oil companies in the U.S. made $148.7 billion in profits. That works out to about $407 million a day, $17 million an hour, or $283,000 per minute. At that pace, in roughly the amount of time it will take to read this Wastebasket, just the top six oil companies will have earned about $3 million in profits. Not revenues, profits.

Good for them. Profits are a good thing. They are a sign of success, and successful companies are part of a growing economy. But the flip side of this equation is the billions of dollars worth of subsidies going to these same companies every year – at a time when our national debt is so large it is becoming a drag on our economy. Credit rating agencies already downgraded the quality of American debt because of our prolific spending, which will eventually make it more expensive for the government to borrow money, which further increases our debt.

Taxpayers for Common Sense has long called for the sunset of all energy subsidies and particularly those for fossil fuel extraction, partly because they are going to companies that don’t need them, but also because they create future liabilities for taxpayers that usually go unnoticed. Besides the myriad subsidies that giant, oil and gas companies enjoy, which cost taxpayers roughly $10 billion a year, there are the costs of cleaning up spills and other disasters that usually get picked up by the feds. Same goes for the coal companies, some of which abandon their mines leaving them for taxpayers to clean up.

This week, TCS President Ryan Alexander joined Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) in announcing the introduction of their bill to end the special tax breaks for oil, gas, and coal companies. This is the most comprehensive approach to ending these handouts, but it is just the latest proposal that targets energy subsides. The President’s FY 2013 Budget Request proposed eliminating just eight oil and gas subsidies, which would save the American taxpayer more than $38.6 billion over the next ten years. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) introduced the “Energy Freedom and Economic Prosperity Act” to cut tax credits for solar panels, wind turbines, oil drilling, and nuclear power. Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced a companion bill in the Senate. Though it only cut two unnecessary subsidies to oil and gas companies, it does suggest a bipartisan interest in finally getting rid of these wasteful energy subsidies. TCS supports all of these bills.

But don’t be fooled into thinking Congress has turned over a new leaf. TCS recently joined a diverse group of advocates denouncing the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions or NAT GAS Act, which was looking to hitch a ride on the transportation bill. It would create new subsidies for natural gas, from manufacturing and infrastructure to consumer tax credits that would carry a pricetag of roughly $5 billion. This would undo the progress made last year finally cutting the ethanol subsidies. When it comes to the energy industry, Congress seems to consider subsidies like alms for the poor.

So it is worth repeating: we need to cut energy subsidies! We can’t afford them, and we don’t need them anyway. Congress should start with the billions in subsidies going to the oil and gas industry every year. They are obsolete, ineffective, and a huge waste of valuable public resources at a time when we are rummaging through the couch cushion to find any loose change to pay for our ballooning deficits and debt.

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TCS Quote of the Week
“Every dollar that is added by Congress will have to be offset somewhere. And if for some reason they don't want to comply with the Budget Control Act, they'd certainly be adding to the deficit, which certainly puts our national security even further at risk” — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's response to a committee approval of a defense authorization bill injected hundreds of millions of dollars into programs that the Pentagon wants to cancel. (Federal News Radio)