Obama Oil Tax Receives Lukewarm Response

Republicans call President Obama’s $10/barrel oil tax ‘dead on arrival.’

​WASHINGTON February 8, 2016; NACSonline reported that President Obama is expected to announce his FY2017 budget plan this week that will include a $10/barrel tax on oil.

The oil tax would be phased in over five years and fund transportation initiatives such as new rail corridors, highway projects and autonomous vehicle pilot projects.

The Washington Post writes that the oil tax would work out to about 24 cents per gallon once fully implemented, and has been supported by some oil industry executives because it would “create an incentive for the private sector to use oil products more efficiently, thus reducing the amount of climate-changing carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.”

“Gasoline taxes haven’t been raised in 25 years, so actually rather than being radical, this proposal is simply returning to standard practice in place since the Eisenhower years of funding of transport infrastructure through small fuel taxes,” Paul Bledsoe, an independent energy consultant and former climate aide in the Clinton White House, told the Post.

Meanwhile, Republican leadership had harsh words for the proposal, saying that the president is “on a mission to destroy a major backbone of the U.S. economy”: the energy sector.

“The president should be proposing policies to grow our economy instead of sacrificing it to appease progressive climate activists,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI). “The good news is this plan is little more than an election-year distraction. As this lame-duck president knows, it's dead on arrival in Congress, because House Republicans are committed to affordable American energy and a strong U.S. economy.”