Republicans by their vote yesterday, support giving subsidies to oil companies making a combined profit of 123 Billion. This is profit. It is the money left over after all expenses have been paid. It is the leftover money that corporations sit around their tables and discuss: Wow, how can we spend all this extra cash?

That amount of “extra” money being made by US oil companies last year is equivalent to one fourth of the entire US Budget for 2008. One fourth. And all of that is extra money……and all but seventeen Republicans, want to give them more…….. subsidies?

Do they not realize that doing so means that this money lost can never be used rebuild highway infrastructure, it will never be used to alleviate suffering, it can never be used to protect the environment, it will not be used to educate our children, it can never be used for cancer research……it cannot ever be use to lower our world record all-time-high deficit?

So for what great cause will it be used for? To give Big Oil more profit……..more than they already have.

Fortunately for America, in 2006 enough Democrats were elected to the House to stop this madness from continuing. Thanks to Democrats, the continued subsidies to enrich Big Oil’s profits were voted down.

Also buried within this legislation, were subsidies going to renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, and geothermal……All but seventeen Republicans said ‘NO” to these subsidies, which often go to start up companies, operating in the red…….Instead, they think your money is better spent subsidizing those same companies that raised you gasoline price 24 cents at the pump yesterday. Prices are much higher this year, despite that more oil is being pumped, refined, and transported than ever before. The soaring costs are based on speculative trading in oil futures……

Meanwhile you and I, struggling to pay for 50% inflation in food items since December, excessive utility Bills, and 24 cents a day price increases at the gas pump…………………………..get no subsidies………….

One of those seventeen breaking from the Republican bloc, was Delaware’s own Mike Castle, who on two out of three votes, sided with the Democrats. Initially there was confusion over his vote because reports from C Span, AP, and the News Journal, all stated that every Republicans had voted in favor of the oil subsidies, when in fact they voted as a bloc, to not have the bill come up for a vote.  It is reassuring to know that even though Mike is crazy for voting with Bush most of the time, he is not as crazy as the majority of Republicans hailing from the other states.

Of course they wouldn’t take my suggestion seriously.  But someone else should offer that they change their mascot to a lemming, for every twenty eight years, their party  seems desperate to throw itself over a cliff…………………