Earlier this month the Senate Finance Committee hauled the heads of five of the worlds largest oil companies before it in Washington D.C. for a routine public flogging.
Pump prices are high and oil companies operating in America are prospering; therefore somebody needed a good butt chewing.
Among them, ConocoPhillips Chairman and CEO Jim Mulva was in for a particularly tough tongue lashing from Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey). Displaying their puffed-up outrage for the cameras, both of these liberal East Coast senators took aim at Mulva for his companys recent press release entitled, ConocoPhillips Highlights Solid Results and Raises Concerns Over Un-American Tax Proposals at Annual Meeting of Shareholders.
It was apparently that Un-American part that riled up the senators most.
Looking down from the high committee platform, Schumer asked with furrowed brow, Do you think anyone who advocates cutting these types of subsidies are un-American, yes or no? That one we deserve a yes or no answer.
In his typically unflappable style, Mulva remained outwardly calm.
Nothing was intended personally or anything like that, he responded respectfully. Mulva continued, Senator, I believe proposals under consideration would have a very adverse impact with respect to energy policy.
Menendez, author of the proposed Senate bill to end the oil tax incentives, wanted to extract his own political pound of flesh from Mulva.
The bottom line is youre unwilling to apologize for your companys statement so I will continue to take offense to it, Menendez huffed.
Offended or not, the full Senate blocked the bill on Tuesday that would have repealed about $2 billion a year in tax breaks for the five biggest oil companies. But such misguided legislation could return. The bill was only defeated on a procedural vote when it failed to gain the needed 60 votes.
Speaking before a much friendlier audience on Friday in Bartlesville, Mulva said he didnt take his experience personally and characterized the Senate hearing as political theater.
Indeed it was.
We Americans tend to vent our spleens to those in power, or those we perceive to be the source of our economic discomfort. Mulva, along with the other top oil company executives, makes for a convenient target.
But as Mulva pointed out in his Friday presentation, the overall energy industry employs more than 9 million people in the United States. Thats nine million American families who owe their standard of living, their home mortgages, their car payments, their health care plans, their retirement plans, etc. to the continued success of oil companies like ConocoPhillips.
From the company press release in question, this is what Mulva actually said, These unprecedented proposed taxes, targeted at only five companies, would have serious effects on our company. We already have the highest effective tax rate among companies in the United States and these proposals unfairly single us out for additional taxes. He further pointed out that not only would increase taxes, cost jobs, raise consumer prices and shrink government revenue, but they would also hamper our ability to remain competitive and reinvest in jobs, new energy technologies and resources in the United States and internationally.
In the future, we wish other oil company executive would be so bold as to draw the direct connection between taxation and the resulting effects on consumer pricing and American jobs.
Venting our spleens may make us feel better, but it does nothing to lower fuel prices. And targeting oil companies with punitive taxation is bad for us all, maybe even un-American.