As expected, a Democratic bill that would have stripped big oil companies of multi-billion annual tax subsidies failed to overcome a Republican filibuster Tuesday evening. The heavily partisan 52-48 vote fell well short of the 60 required to achieve cloture. Three Democrats -- Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Mark Begich (D-AK), and Ben Nelson (D-NE) -- voted with Republicans to maintain the subsidies. Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME) voted with the Democrats.
Clearly the Republicans have not learned their lesson from their vote on the Ryan Medicare phase-out plan. Now they are also on the record for retaining up to $21 billion a year in subsidies to oil companies that make about that much in quarterly profits when crude oil spikes. It will be interesting to see if Democrats can turn this into as much of a campaign issue as they have with the Ryan Plan. Also, fuck the three Dems that voted against it too. Shame on them, though it's not surprising given the states from which they hail. They are bought and paid for just as much as the GOP caucus.
This is another lesson in the holy grail of bipartisanship in that no budgetary measure will ever pass Congress unless it sufficiently fucks over the poor or middle class. Federal spending and programs that benefit the lower 90% of the population are too expensive, because we are broke. Billions of dollars given freely to enormously profitable corporations are just a cost of doing business, if we don't give them the money then the price of gas will be infinity unicorn dollars per gallon, and if we don't give them the money their fee-fees will be hurt and they will pack their shit and leave for the safety of a country that is more friendly to corporations. And we don't want any of that, now do we?
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