Washington Bureau

Group Unimpressed With McCain’s Gas-Tax Holiday Idea

WASHINGTON – One environmental group is not very impressed with John McCain’s call today for a gas-tax holiday and his claim that in his presidential administration “there will be no corporate welfare.”

McCain made the comments in a speech in Philadelphia today.

But the League of Conservation Voters points out in a press release that on Dec. 17, 2007, McCain was the only senator to miss a vote to invoke cloture (end debate and allow for a vote) on a version of an energy bill that would have repealed $18 billion in subsidies to oil companies.

“McCain was the lone Senator to miss the vote, ensuring that billions of taxpayer dollars continued to flow into ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and ConocoPhillips,” the group’s press release said. “These multinationals enjoyed another year of record profits, yet the corporate tax cuts McCain proposed today would reduce taxes for those five companies by an additional $3.8 billion.”

“If Senator McCain wants to save money for American taxpayers, he should get to the root of the problem: massive taxpayer-funded subsidies to huge oil companies that are already making tens of billions of dollars a year,” LCV President Gene Karpinski said. “The answer to the high cost of gas is not temporary tax maneuvering, it is a fundamental shift away from oil and towards clean, renewable energy.”

-- Billy House
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