Fact Check: Dick Cheney's Energy Bill Included Billions In Giveaways To Oil Companies
4/25/2008 6:24:29 PM

The AP counters the fact that Dick Cheney's 2005 energy bill contained "billions in dollars in giveaways to the oil companies" with the following:

The 2005 energy bill actually raised taxes on the oil and gas industry by about 300 million over 11 years, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Actually, The giveaways to the oil industry are not limited to tax breaks. They also include provisions like royalty relief that are worth billions. And many of the tax "increases" are simply extensions of exiting taxes that do not impose any additional burden on oil companies.

1. About half of giveaways were not tax provisions. For instance, the oil companies received billions in royalty waivers. For example:

Sections 344-345
Waives royalty payments for drilling for some natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico.

Section 346
Waives royalty payments for drilling in offshore Alaska.

Sections 353-4
Waives royalty payments for gas hydrate extraction on the Outer Continental Shelf and public land in Alaska.

Section 383
Allows oil companies drilling in federal land off the coast of a particular state to pay the state 44 cents ...   more »

Clinton, Obama, and the Bush-Cheney energy bill that allows LNG to threaten Oregon
guest column

By Paddy McGuire of Portland, Oregon. Paddy is a former executive director of the Democratic Party of Oregon, a former Clinton Administration appointee, and a former deputy Oregon Secretary of State.

Last week, he contributed "The Red Sox Should Have Dropped Out".

Critics of Hillary Clinton repeatedly point to her 2002 vote to authorize going to war with Iraq (if Saddam Hussein continued to stymie U.N. weapons inspectors, a resolution supported by U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix) as the primary evidence that she should not be President. Many cite this vote as a reason to oppose Hillary, despite many of those same people having earlier supported John Kerry and John Edwards for President, who voted exactly the same way.

Fast forward to 2005.

Vice-President Cheney crafted an energy bill with corporate energy pals in Congress that stripped authority from the states on the siting of power plants.

Today, the Cheney-Bush Energy bill is responsible for no fewer than 3 LNG facilities threatening Oregon coastline, rivers, forests, fish, fishermen, farmers, and neighborhoods up and down western Oregon, and most of that natural gas will ultimately go ...   more »