The Trump/GOP budget bill couldn’t be uglier for most Americans. But it certainly looks beautiful for Trump’s big oil buddies. They didn’t even have to bribe donate to Trump as much as he wanted to get it.
Via The New York Times:
During the presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump gathered oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago estate and promised them a powerful return on their investment if they raised $1 billion to help him retake the White House.
The industry never ponied up quite that much, but nevertheless, six months into Mr. Trump’s presidency, oil and gas companies are poised to reap multibillion-dollar windfalls from the administration’s actions so far.
A sweeping domestic policy bill that Mr. Trump signed into law this month includes about $18 billion in new and expanded tax incentives for the oil and gas industry, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, which analyzes tax policy for Congress. It also includes billions of dollars in tax breaks that aren’t specific to oil and gas but were top oil industry priorities as the law was being negotiated.
But wait, there’s more. The oil companies get to further risk our health even as Trump and his toadies endanger our health with their cuts. This week, the head of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, said he will rescind its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. That would effectively derail any federal climate efforts but also reverse current regulations.
The Times also noted that the Trump administraton has been “cutting funding for climate research and rolling back programs designed to help millions of Americans prepare for rising sea levels, deadlier heat waves, increasingly intense wildfires and other effects of global warming."
So, they’re not only ensuring more climate tragedies but setting them up to be more harmful.
Fortunately, Democrats seem eager to repeal the Big Benefits For Big Oil and Big Gas. Sen. Bernie Sanders has already introduced legislation to that effect. It’s not likely to go anywhere in the Trump-controlled Congress. “But Democrats, environmental advocates and watchdog groups said they intended to keep the pressure on,” The Times reported.
