Energy Tax Comparison

Americans for Tax Reform released a detailed comparison of Senator Obama's and Senator McCain's proposed tax policies regarding natural resources. These statistics should not suprise anybody, but they do tell a tale of the desire of liberals to limit demand by mandate and economic punishments while not addressing the supply issue.



John McCain promotes repealing certain tax incentives for (the failed attempts at) ethanal production. John McCain supports of a continuation of some of the Bush Administration tax incentives for oil and natural gas exploration. John McCain supports the development and building of new nuclear power plants in the US over the next 30 years. John McCain also supports a gas tax holiday that will save consumers 18 cents per gallon for that period.

Barack Obama supports increasing taxes on domestic oil companies to punish them for producing the oil and gas that they already are. Barack Obama proposes increasing the corporate income tax and higher divedend rates for oil companies. Barack Obama has no long-term plan to build nuclear plants.

From this information, it is clear that John McCain will have a better energy policy than Barack Obama. Allowing the oil companies to produce oil and give them economic incentives to produce better technology to drill and refine gas more responsibly is good policy. Long-term, John McCain supports building new nuclear power plants (much like Europe and Japan are doing) and moving away from coal.

Obama's energy plan involves hot air (literally, wind power!) and a lot of rhetoric while raising taxes on those that actually produce fuel and new research and development. McCain has a more clear long-term goal in mind of domestice energy independence.