Unsurprisingly, the plan is about taking profits from companies and redistributing it
Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse are pushing a bill they say will help bring relief from high gas prices to Americans – as energy industry critics argue it would do the exact opposite.
The proposal, which comes as Russia’s war on Ukraine delivers a shock to global energy prices, is called the “Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax.” According to Khanna, D-Calif., and Whitehouse, D-R.I., the bill would levy a tax on oil barrels sold by large producers “equal to 50 percent of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and the pre-pandemic average price per barrel between 2015 and 2019.”
The money from that tax would be sent to consumers as a quarterly rebate, according to a description of the bill, with a cutoff for single people making $75,000 or more and families making $150,000 or more. (snip)
The tax would only affect to companies that extract over 300,000 barrels of oil per day, applying to oil extracted both domestically and worldwide, according to a press release from Khanna’s office. That threshold would exempt “[s]maller companies accounting for roughly 70 percent of the domestic production… so oil giants like Exxon Mobil and Chevron cannot simply gouge consumers further without the threat of losing market share,” it said.
“We’ve seen this script before, and we cannot allow the fossil fuel industry to once again collect a massive windfall by taking advantage of an international crisis,” Whitehouse said. A press release from Whitehouse and Khanna said the increase in gas prices, “is not justified by increases in the cost of domestic production, but is driven by international markets controlled by fossil fuel cartels.”
Tell me you don’t know how the commodities market works without telling me you don’t know how it works. Oil companies are not setting the prices. They generally make around 10 cents on the dollar. And this bill would be immediately litigated, and the 1983 Ptasynski v United States may well be revisited on the constitutionality. Don’t think the oil companies will sit there atnd take it.
Energy industry representatives, however, are pushing back against the proposal, arguing that it may have the exact opposite of its intended effect.
“Policies like a so-called windfall profits tax are misguided and would likely backfire by further driving up energy costs for American families and businesses,” American Exploration and Production Council CEO Anne Bradbury said.
Well, this is what Democrats think is wise policy, and, really, they do not care if it drives prices up, because they get to redistribute money, gaining voters who are beholden to government.
Read: Democrats Have A Plan To Lower Gas Prices Or Something »
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F
Since Russia 
If you’re paying for gasoline right now, you probably don’t want to hear from smug electric car drivers — but I am one of those people, so please accept my apologies at the outset. We’re the ones who were surprised by fuel prices (if we happened to notice them driving past a gas station) long before most people began paying $5 or $6 per gallon for the stuff.
