By John J. Sweeney
Pushed by soaring gas and food costs, consumer prices just took one of their biggest leaps in a quarter century, the annual rate rising 5.0 percent since last June. Energy costs alone are up about 30 percent. Our pain is Big Oil's gain—President Bush has made sure of it, and would keep it that way.
Gas prices approaching $5 a gallon have been a tipping point for America's working families—the last straw on top of stagnant wages, job losses, soaring health care costs, disappearance of home equity and growing debt.
But that’s not the only reason working families are indignant about the crushing costs at the pump. We’re indignant, angry and demanding change because gas prices epitomize the brutal corporatization and politicization of today's .
Almost 80 percent of what we pay for gas goes to Big Oil. The week Bush took office, the price of gas was $1.47 a gallon. Under Bush's watch, the five largest oil companies have made $525.3 billion in profits—$123.3 billion in 2007 alone. Last year, . broke the record for profits made in a year by a U.S. company, reporting a stunning $40 billion in profits. That's more than $1,287 of profit for every second of 2007.
And Big Oil's CEOs? Their median compensation has hit $15.4 million a year—and that's just the median. Last year, ExxonMobil gave chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson a raise to $21.7 million. Occidental Petroleum Corp. paid chief executive Ray Irani $34.2 million. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. chairman and CEO James Hackett received $26.7 million.
The wealth of Big Oil is no accident. President Bush repeatedly protected tax breaks for Big Oil and slashed funding for renewable energy projects. Now , earning the nickname "McSame," proposes giving $3.8 billion in tax cuts to the top five oil companies.
McCain's proposal follows his record of votes for Big Oil. In 2007, McCain was the only senator to miss a vote on the energy bill repealing tax subsidies for oil companies. In 2005, he voted against imposing a temporary windfall profits tax on oil companies and using the proceeds to provide nonrefundable tax credits to working families. Earlier, he opposed eliminating tax breaks for oil and natural gas companies related to depletion and drilling costs.
And Big Oil knows it. McCain's campaign received $723,777 from oil and gas industry PACs and employees as of the end of May, almost twice as much in donations as Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton received, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
McCain's campaign and his fundraising circle are full of corporate lobbyists who make their comfortable livings by influencing policy in the interest of corporations, often at the expense of working families. Phil Gramm, a top McCain economic adviser who stepped aside after calling us a "" in a "mental recession," basically wrote and passed the infamous "Enron loophole" that allowed speculators to drive up oil and electricity costs. Speculation is responsible for an estimated 31 percent of the crude oil price.
Working families are suffering. And the high-level willingness to devastate working families by enriching corporations and CEOs is moving working people across the country to demand that it's time to turn around America.
