Washington, DC – As president, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would provide $43 billion in federal help for oil and gas companies over the next five years – approximately $970 million of which would come from Connecticut taxpayers, according to a report released today by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
With the five biggest publicly traded oil companies in the world earn a staggering $148 billion in profits over the past year, the new report shows how this money could be better spent – by investing in conservation and alternative sources of energy and saving American families money, creating thousands of new jobs, and helping to power millions of homes with clean, renewable sources of energy.
“With families struggling to afford nearly $4 a gallon for gas, Connecticut taxpayers should know that John McCain intends to spend their tax dollars subsidizing the big oil companies,” said Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow at the Center American Progress Action Fund, and co-author of the paper with Research Associate Ben Furnas.
Connecticut’s share of the giveaways under McCain could be used to weatherize over 340,000 homes – saving each household an average of $360 every year on lower utility bills and reducing energy usage and carbon emissions.
If invested in alternative sources of energy, Connecticut’s share could build enough wind power plants to power 150,000 homes with clean and renewable energy, creating at least 1,200 high quality jobs. If invested in geothermal power plants, the money would build enough to power 240,000 homes and create over 3,000 jobs.
McCain would reach a total of $43 billion in subsidies through a combination of protecting existing subsidies and creating new ones. While McCain supports the elimination of some of the current subsidies for gas and oil companies, he would maintain approximately $21 billion in current subsidies, and would also pass a corporate tax cut worth more than $22 billion to America’s five largest oil companies over the next five years, for a total of $43 billion in tax benefits and giveaways.
Read the full report showing the impact of the subsidies for every state here.
The Wonk Room, the first public policy rapid-response blog of its kind, is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. To find out more, visit http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/about.