Go After Big Polluters with Bernie

When a nascent industry benefits the country, government can help establish that industry by subsidizing it, but once that industry is well established and profitable, subsidies should be withdrawn and redirected to serve national needs.  To maintain subsidies for highly profitable companies. is simply welfare for the rich.  This is exactly the problem with subsidizing fossil fuel companies, who are also among our nation’s worst polluters.

Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Keith Ellison launched a new piece of legislation that would repeal $113 billion of tax-breaks, handouts and subsidies for the fossil fuel industry over the next ten years.

Currently, the fossil fuel industry is generously subsidized despite the fact that it’s already the most profitable business on earth! (During the first quarter of 2012, the Big Five oil companies earned a combined $33.5 billion, or $368 million per day.) It’s as if the industry is being awarded a bonus for wrecking the environment. Fossil fuels are subsidized at nearly six times the rate of renewable energy. From 2002 to 2008, the US government gave the mature fossil fuel industry over $72 billion in subsidies, while investments in the emerging renewable industry totaled $12.2 billion.

We’ll never get to renewable energy if we keep offering gobs of cash to oil, coal and gas companies to continue business as usual. The End Polluter Welfare Act would strip away these obscene subsidies…

Inserted from <The Nation>

I’d go one step further.  Fossil fuel companies should also pay fees to cover the costs of their pollution that is now externalized to taxpayers.

Bernie, Keith and others plug their bill.

I fully support this effort and urge you to do likewise.

Support the End Polluter Welfare Act