Now that the oil executives lied to Congress (does anyone tell the truth anymore?) I'm kinda glad that they might get stuck with a windfall profits tax. Call it a liars tax. I know that this is a silly thing to think and say, especially after arguing against a profits tax, but sometimes efficiency isn't everything. Can I say that here?
Actually, a windfall profits tax is still a bad idea.
Here is the story from the WSJ's morning brief (11/16):
A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress, the Washington Post report. The document shows that officials from Exxon Mobil, Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil and BP America met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated. Activities of the task force -- made up primarily of cabinet-level officials -- attracted complaints from environmentalists, who said they were shut out of the task-force discussions while corporate interests were present. The meetings were held in secret and the White House refused to release a list of participants.
In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America said he did not know. Chevron was not named in the White House document, but the Government Accountability Office has found that Chevron was one of several companies that "gave detailed energy policy recommendations" to the task force. In addition, Mr. Cheney had a separate meeting with John Browne, BP's chief executive, according to a person familiar with the task force's work; that meeting is not noted in the document, the Post says.
In a telling sign of how much the political winds on the issue have shifted in the face of soaring energy prices, the Republican-controlled Senate Finance Committee voted yesterday to impose a $5 billion tax next year on the nation's biggest oil companies, the New York Times reports. The measure amounts to a one-year windfall-profits tax, a concept that most Republicans had until recently denounced as a discredited idea from the 1970s. It was added to a larger bill that would cut taxes by about $61 billion over the next five years.
