Washington, DC – As president, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would provide $39 billion in federal help for oil and gas companies over the next five years – approximately $1.1 billion of which would come from Virginia 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, Virginia 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.
Virginia’s share of the giveaways under McCain could be used to weatherize over 400,000 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, Virginia’s share could build enough wind power plants to power 170,000 homes with clean and renewable energy, creating at least 1,300 high quality jobs. If invested in geothermal power plants, the money would build enough to power 280,000 homes and create over 3,500 jobs.
McCain would reach a total of $39 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 $17 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 $39 billion in tax benefits and giveaways.
Read the full report here.
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