Democrats Gettin' Feisty!

The Democrats in Washington have started showing some moxie. Not only did Nancy Pelosi light into the President for his too-little, too-late response to oil prices, they're about to suggest an alternate approach. How's about a sixty-day federal gas tax holiday?

The measure, proposed by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), would reduce the cost of gas by $0.184 per gallon and the cost of diesel by $0.244 per gallon. The move, aides say, will provide $100 million dollars per day in relief.

Democrats say the money will be made up by cutting six billion dollars in tax breaks to oil firms. Currently, the money from the federal gas tax goes to the Highway Trust fund. ...

Menendez's proposal would do the following to taxes for big oil companies:

• Foreign Oil & Gas Foreign Tax Credit and Income. Under present law, US companies can claim a foreign tax credit for taxes paid to another country and not royalties and similar payments related to an economic benefit. The provision denies foreign tax credits for payments to a foreign country if the foreign country does not have a generally applicable income tax.
  
  
• LIFO – Oil & Gas. Under current law, businesses are generally permitted to use a last-in, first-out (LIFO) method to account for their inventories. This allows companies to create a tax advantage during times of rising prices. This proposal limits the tax benefits of this LIFO method of accounting for integrated oil companies with gross receipts in excess of $1 billion.
  
  
• Elimination of Amortization of Geological and Geophysical Expenditures for Large Oil & Gas Companies. Eliminates the tax break for accelerated depreciation for these expenditures for fully integrated oil companies that was passed in the Energy Bill.
  
  
• Eliminates Royalty Relief and other Direct Spending. The amendment also eliminates royalty relief and other direct spending for oil and gas production incentives in Titles III and IX of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 totaling approximately $700 million. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the major oil company CEOs testified that they did not need these incentives.

Hee-hee-hee. Oh, and while they're at it:

Democrats in the House and Senate renewed their calls for Congress to pass their bottled-up legislation that would clarify the legal definition of price gouging and manipulation so the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department could get the power to go after rising gas prices that can't be justified.

It's so nice to see that the Democrats are finally deciding it's OK to open issues sometimes, like when they come gift-wrapped on a silver platter. If they keep this up for a while, people might actually start to think they stand for something and are a real alternative!