McCaskill, Tax Subsidies and the Free Market

Politics makes us all crazy, to the point that we’ll often sacrifice our own integrity to argue a point that is nonsensical.  Take for instance the recent mea culpa from a St. Louis blogger who was shocked, shocked! to learn that Rep Anthony Weiner was actually guilty of that which he was accused–preferring instead to blame a vast right-wing conspiracy.  (By the way, he still blames them.)

But we were surprised to read an editorial in the Springfield News-Leader that The Source described as opposition to, “Claire McCaskill’s war on the free market.”  Wait, what?!  Was opposition to an oil industry tax subsidy being described as anti free market?  Was this free market group themselves in support of such a tax subsidy?  That didn’t sound very free market to us.

Jeffrey Mazzella, president of the Center for Individual Freedom, was kind enough to issue The Missouri Record a clarification. The CFIF was not advocating for tax subsidies.  According to Mazzella:

Subsidies, by definition, are direct payments of money by government to the private sector, usually to prop up goods and services that cannot survive in a free and competitive marketplace without the financial support of other people’s money.

The entire US tax code is an awful mess of unfairness, an absolute horror to free marketers, but fixing it is not to selectively punish vital industries which are complying, undeniably, to the existing rules.

To be sure, the US oil and gas industry does not receive what Senator McCaskill incorrectly labels “subsidies.”  The industry does take advantage of legally-permitted tax deductions, largely on costs for doing business – deductions that are identical or very similar to those taken by almost all US companies.  After taking those deductions, the oil and gas industry still contributes nearly $100 million per day to the federal treasury.

Mazzella didn’t stop there, but ended with a zinger against McCaskill and her other policy positions:

Leave it to a career politician plagued with her own tax scandals to advance manipulative rhetoric on the issue for political gain.  And if McCaskill gets her way, it is inescapably true that her policy will leave Missouri – and all American – families stuck paying higher energy bills.

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