Welfare for Oil Companies

You are not going to believe this. Or maybe you will. Maybe you're so jaded that this doesn't even shock you. But it shocks me. Bush is simply giving - that's right giving - oil away to oil companies. Oil that belongs to all of us. And with our deficit, too. How is it that we're standing for it????? The New York Times reports on this in a story entitled, "U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies":

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 — The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.

New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.

Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period.

It makes me sick that my tax dollars are going to line the pockets of the already fantastically profitable oil companies. This is true fascism - the union of government and corporations.