Is anyone else concerned about Obama's short term plan for oil?

Question

All information in statement sections ware cut and pasted directly from Obama’s official website.

Obama’s short term relief plan part 1:

Statement from website:

Barack Obama will require oil companies to take a reasonable share of their record‐breaking windfall profits and use it to provide direct relief worth $500 for an individual and $1,000 for a married couple…. The rebates would be fully paid for with five years of a windfall profits tax on record oil company profits.

My Analysis:

Yippee $500 sounds wonderful but does this sound realistic? Are the oil companies just going to say ‘Here you go!’ and pay every taxpayer in America $500? This sounds like years in a courtroom to me?

And do you want to live in a country where if the economy is not doing well the president picks an industry that is doing well and forces them to pay every individual in the country a set amount of money?

This sounds like very communist thinking being justified by creating a new windfall profits tax. Now I am not defending the large amounts of money made by the oil companies but since when is the president allowed to distribute the profits of a private corporation freely.

Obama’s short term relief plan part 2:

Statement from website:

The United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is there for a purpose: to help Americans in times of crisis. Barack Obama believes the doubling of oil prices in the past year is a crisis for millions of Americans…. With the goal of bringing down prices at the pump, he supports releasing light oil from the SPR now and replacing it later with heavier crude more suited to our long‐term needs.

My Analysis:

If oil prices go down this replacing this reserves later may be possible but what happens if prices double again in the next year? Then we have depleted our reserves, and with no reserves we are completely at the mercy of foreign oil producers.

What is the backup plan if prices continue to go up? What happens then the speech saying ‘Sorry I screwed up unfortunately we are being gouged by foreign countries due to our lack of oil reserves maybe you should go buy a bike?’


This is not intended to boost McCain's plans for the oil industry I am just very concerned about the path that Obama's plan would take us down.

How can Obama's short term plan be good for this country?

Additional Details

Kev that is a good point that I will have to look into in terms of the increased tax. You also brought up alternative energy which I was going to include in a later post. Many people assume that McCain has no plans for alternative energy, however I have also been looking into both candidates desire for alternative energy and McCain does have plans for many forms of alternative energy (take a look at his official website) he is simply taking a different approach. Overall he is taking a different approach by providing large incentives to companies who develop alternative energy sources. He is not paying for research in hopes of better sources but paying for results (basically encouraging companies to produce results faster so that Americans can enjoy the benefits faster)

Answer 1

There is noting about Obama that is good for this country! Sorry but that's just the way it is.

Why do you waste your time on the candidates web sites. Do you think they are anymore likely to tell you the truth there than they are in their advertising? It's a waste. You can't believe anything you read there regardless of who the candidate is.



McCain/Palin '08

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Answer 2

He wouldn't even have the power to do that. How in the h-ll would that happen ?

He's such a moron and his followers are even worse.

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Answer 3

There is no short-term solution to the oil crisis. But, it's also unfair to suggest that the Democrats are the only one who want to tax oil companies to raise revenue.

Palin, the VP candidate and a Republican, also "pushed through a $1.5 billion tax increase on oil- company profits last year to help fund price relief for Alaskans." Translation, Palin did the same thing.

At least Obama's long term plan calls for more government investment in alternative energy.

Unfortunately, the Strategic Oil Reserve only has 33 days of reserve at our current rate of comsumption, so we are dependent on foreign oil production regardless of whether we tap the Strategic Oil Reserve or not.

Source(s):

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2…

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Answer 4

no their not, by this blog they are more worried if Gov. Palin is like a hockey stick, an ice cube, a snow blower, there are more worried if she can be veep and a mother at the same time, and they are worried about her daughter being preg. kind of scary that they are going to vote for Obama based on their assumptions and not on facts and research about the candidates them self's by the way i congratulate you on taking the time to see the truth, obama is dangers choice for this country

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Answer 5

NO.

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Answer 6

Obama lives in some fairytale world where actions do not have consequences. And his followers live in the surrealistic part of that world.

All that will do is drive up gas prices and drive oil majors out of the U.S. market.

At best it will be running in place. The people it will hurt the most are those already hurt the most as they will bear the brunt of increased costs.

Much as I detest the Republican's party of war, the Democrats are the party of economic disaster. At least the Republicans want to wreak their havoc on the other side of the planet.

Your analysis is well thought out. To sum it up Obama's plan is idiotic.

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Answer 7

The best indication for me is to compare the two candidates' positions on short term solutions. You have quoted Obama's. Here is McCain's. http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issu…

As you can see, rather than a full analysis and discussion of McCain's plans, all we get are two paragraphs which do not even mention the short term solutions, just discussions about how he wants to produce energy independence by the year 2025.

I agree with your analysis on the windfall profits money grab, but I don't agree with the SPR analysis. If the oil were released from the reserve, it would drop prices now, but the reserve is much larger than you think, and by the time it were even close to being exhausted, we would have new sources, either of oil or alternative energy sources with which to replace it.

But I prefer the candidate who actually spells things out point by point to one who just gives us a sketch that is supposed to make us feel better.

Edit: Kev's analysis only works if there is a complete cessation of all imports. The SPR estimates that in that case at 4.4 million drawdown per day, the supply would be exhausted in 113 days. With the lower amount required to simply supplement the gasoline inventories enough to drop the price, it would last much longer than that.

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