Obama Apparently Drops Windfall Profits Tax Proposal

During the campaign, President-elect Barack Obama promised to stick it to Big Oil with a windfall profits tax. At the time, reason explained why such a tax was a bad idea:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is also calling for a windfall profits tax on oil companies. But will it work?

The last time the United States imposed a windfall profits tax on oil companies was in 1980 and it lasted until 1988. The result, according to a 1990 Congressional Research Service analysis, was that the tax on oil company profits decreased domestic production by 3 percent to 6 percent and increased dependence on foreign oil by 8 percent to 16 percent. Keep in mind that the big private oil companies actually control only about 6 percent of the world's known oil reserves—the rest are owned by gigantic foreign national oil companies. And just where do private oil companies get the billions they invest in projects to increase supplies? That's right; their profits.

Obama has now quietly dropped the idea:

President-elect Barack Obama has removed any reference of his promise to implement a windfall profits tax on the oil and gas industry from the Obama-Biden Transition Team website, www.change.gov.

Activists are dismayed: 

With the election behind him, President-elect Obama has failed to justify the removal of the windfall profits tax from his tax plan. The subtle and unexplained elimination of this issue from the Obama-Biden agenda should concern Americans from every background.  The American Small Business League (ASBL) questions whether the sudden elimination of this issue is a further indication that large corporations are already demonstrating their ability to influence the Obama Administration.

Hooray for economic sanity.