My colleague Ann Carlson explains:
[O]ne of the most audacious political stances I’d seen in many years was the Republican position — dreamed up by GOP pollster Frank Luntz — that a tax on big banks was actually a big bank bailout. Converting a tax to a government bailout was pure political chutzpah, and some sick form of genius.
Now it’s the Democrats’ turn to cry bailout. Several Democratic Senators — Lautenberg and Menendez from New Jersey, Nelson from Florida — have proposed raising the amount of liability insurance an oil company must carry for spill coverage from $75 million to $10 billion. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a huge supporter of oil drilling, has apparently blocked the bill. She’s instead proposed charging an additional penny a barrel of oil to provide increased funding for the federal oil spill response fund. So aren’t the Republicans now in favor of a big bailout for big oil?
This should be the ad from the DNC all over the web. No, I’m not holding my breath.
It actually makes sense to impose taxes to pay for anticipated environmental costs. But the GOP’s attacks on climate change regulation and their complete mendacity on financial regulation give me less scruples about such things.
Ok, I’m somewhat confused. (Not an unusual state, of course…) How did a “tax on big banks” inflate the budget deficit, and increase the liquidity of selected banks? Generally you’d expect a tax to involve money flowing in the OTHER direction, no?
Ah, I see: A bit of searching reveals that Obama has proposed a tax to pay for the bailout. (Not that the revenues generated would be used to pay off the borrowing which funded the bailouts, or refunded to the taxpayers. No, they’ll just be used for increased spending in other areas…) You realize that this does not convert the bailout itself, retroactively, into a “tax”?
The real corker from Senator Murkowski was the line about how raising the liability limit would be a hardship on “mom and pop” oil drilling operations. Picture Grant Wood’s American Gothic couple, grease smudged standing in front of an oil rigg. Mom and pop indeed.
For the record, it appears that it was not Sen. Murkowski but Sen. Menendez who used the “mom and pop” phrase, mocking Murkowski’s objection to the bill on behalf of smaller, independent drilling companies: “This isn’t mom and pop in the grocery store around the corner,” he said, pointing out that some are $40 billion/year businesses.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/13/94125/alaskas-murkowski-blocks-senate.html#ixzz0nuReOkud
Murkowski’s proposal has slipped a decimal place. Her tax of one cent per barrel on US production would yield roughly $30 million per year. That would fund one $300 million clean-up in each decade … perhaps 10% of an Exxon Valdez’s or Deepwater Horizon’s clean-up cost. If she were serious, she would be calling for at least a ten-cent per barrel clean-up tax.