Gas tax repeal would provide overdue relief

The price of gas continues its uphill climb, and families are increasingly faced with difficult financial decisions. The gas needed for that quick trip to Anchorage is no longer just an afterthought.

As consumers scrape by and wonder how they might afford to keep driving if prices continue to rise, oil companies are raking in record profits and asking for - and getting - huge subsidies and tax breaks. Those subsidies, of course, are funded by our tax dollars, effectively completing the double-dip into consumers' wallets.

It may seem incomprehensible that a filthy-rich industry should be such a huge beneficiary of public largesse. But considering the industry money that pours into politicians' campaign war chests each election, the payback shouldn't be surprising.

Since 2001, Sen. Ted Stevens has received more than $102,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in her one election cycle, took in more than $204,000 from the industry, which built on the nearly $162,000 her father's Senate campaign received between 1997 and 2002.

Not to be outdone, Rep. Don Young, who chairs the House Transportation Committee, has benefited to the tune of more than $346,000 since 2000. During the same time, he has been an avid supporter of doubling consumers' gas-tax burden.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C., organization that tracks money in politics, the oil and gas industry has heaped more than $86 million on political campaigns since 2000. Additionally, according to watchdog group The Center for Public Integrity, the industry has spent another $256 million in that same time on lobbying efforts - presumably to ensure that campaign spending does not go for naught.

Every year, the industry is rewarded with billions of dollars in new "incentives." The recently passed federal energy bill, for example, included another $2.6 billion in industry giveaways.

Here in Alaska, we are no strangers to the oil and gas industry feeding at the public trough. In addition to the routine tax breaks and subsidies, the state is the lowest-taxing major oil producer in the world. Around the world, oil companies are accustomed to forking over an average of 80 percent of their profits in the form of royalties to the host government. Here, the number is closer to 40 percent.

Additionally, the industry tax structure here is such that as the price of oil increases, industry keeps a larger slice of the profit pie. And the majority of the state Legislature, also awash in industry cash, thinks that's just fine.

Alaskans now pay more than 26 cents a gallon in state and federal taxes on gasoline. That's nearly 10 percent of the price. Is there any other product on which Alaska consumers would tolerate that kind of tax? Unlikely.

There appears to be no end in sight for the upward spiraling of prices at the pump and the toll they are taking on working people and their families. It is high time, then, that lawmakers, state and federal, begin to defend their constituents' pocketbooks as staunchly as they defend industry's bottom line by immediately rolling back the taxes on gasoline.

If the revenue is truly needed, then the mechanisms are in place to recoup it: Revise the generous industry subsidies at the federal level and, on the state level, demand fair market value for Alaska's oil.

Then tax relief will go where it should go - and where it's most desperately needed.