Oil and gas firms so far elude flak over super failure

Dec. 5, 2011
So far, oil and gas companies have been strangely absent from Democratic Party explanations for why the congressional super committee failed.

So far, oil and gas companies have been strangely absent from Democratic Party explanations for why the congressional super committee failed.

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction on Nov. 21 quit trying to find $1.2 trillion in fiscal remedies and defaulted to categorical spending cuts beginning in 2013.

Thus ended the latest assault on tax preferences important to oil and gas companies, such as immediate expensing of intangible drilling costs and a credit for taxes paid abroad.

Overall, the outcome isn't surprising.

Contemporary American politics has become a clash of expectations about the reach of federal governance.

One side favors a government aggressive with taxation and regulation, a government active in culture and individual lives. The other side wants a government constrained to specific roles and otherwise absent from decisions people make—especially about money.

These are more than disagreements over policy. They're fundamental. They collided in the super committee. Under these conditions, expectations for compromise have been wishful. But that didn't stop President Barack Obama from bludgeoning Republicans for not compromising. After the super committee decamped, he said, "There's still too many Republicans in Congress who have refused to listen to the voices of reason and compromise that are coming from outside of Washington."

Obama said this after threatening in September to veto any agreement that didn't raise taxes and before making a new threat to veto any change to programmed spending cuts. To the president, compromising is what other people are supposed to do. This is political farce. Obama wants to make Republicans look like unyielding supporters of "the wealthiest Americans" and protectors of "tax breaks for the wealthy"—dragons to slay as he runs for reelection. It's interesting that the president's latest populist gush confined itself to the wealthy and didn't, as in September, specify other demons such as oil companies and owners of corporate airplanes.

Maybe Obama has come to appreciate the perils of discriminatory taxation. More probably, he just wanted to keep his speech short.

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