To the Editor:
Earlier this year, President Obama underlined his commitment to an “all-of-the-above” energy policy and celebrated America’s dominance in oil and natural gas production. Virginia senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine co-sponsored legislation to expand offshore energy development. With gasoline prices low and still dropping throughout the nation, it would be easy to believe that energy will continue to be affordable. But experience tells us that’s unlikely.
The cost of fuel matters to everyone who draws a paycheck or is trying to land a job. Our state is heavily reliant on affordable energy to fuel our very diverse transportation network, manufacturing and other drivers of this area’s economy. It also supports job growth and brings a measure of economic security to middle-class families here. But as lawmakers in Washington, D.C. tackle upcoming fiscal issues and reform of the nation’s tax code, the energy industry – especially oil and gas businesses- could be facing some serious financial challenges. And depend upon it, those challenges are ultimately going to impact the personal economies of Virginians and all Americans.
Making the tax system simpler and fairer is a sound strategy, but efforts to close so-called loopholes in the current code have included repeal of legitimate tax incentives that favor oil and gas companies. This would amount to a huge tax increase for the fossil energy industry that would likely result in higher fuel prices for businesses and consumers, cutbacks in jobs and capital investment and a slowdown in energy-reliant state economies such as ours.
Now is not the time to single out U.S. energy producers for higher taxes as a means to raise revenue, stave off a fiscal crisis or as part of an overhaul of the tax code. Affordable energy fuels our economy and our legislators need to remember that as they take up these critical issues.
Sincerely,
Cornell Carter