At a luncheon hosted by Politico at the GOP convention in Tampa today, T. Boone Pickens said truck fleets will switch from diesel to natural gas without Congress approving the NAT GAS Act, legislation offering generous tax credits for the purchase of natural gas trucks (up to $64,000 per vehicle) and installation of natural gas fueling infrastructure. Pickens reportedly spent about $100 million over the past five years promoting his energy agenda, commonly known as the Pickens Plan.
Congress declined to pass either the NAT GAS Act or an earlier iteration of the Pickens Plan that would have required 20% of the nation’s electricity to come from wind, thus supposedly freeing up natural gas to be used to fuel both trucks and passenger cars.
Critics argued that if switching to natural gas vehicles makes commercial sense, private enterprise will bring about the transformation without Washington trying to pick energy market winners and losers. Pickens is now talking the talk. Politico‘s Darren Goodereports:
“You don’t have to have a tax credit; it’s going to happen,” he [Pickens] said. The choices to run 18-wheelers, he said, are between natural gas and diesel — and natural gas is “$2 a gallon cheaper.”
And Pickens strongly suggested that he doesn’t have any plans to try to push his plan anymore in the nation’s Capital.
“I will not go back to Washington again unless it’s for a social event,” he said.
The billionaire and former oil baron also lamented that while his plan initially promoted wind energy, that hasn’t worked out so well.
“I’ve lost my ass” to wind-energy investments, he conceded.
T. Boone Pickens went on Bloomberg to discuss the Pickens Plan:
Pickens claims that Koch is working for himself, while the pure hearted T. Boone Pickens is working for America. Now yes, Koch Industries has a financial incentive to not support federally built infrastructure for a fuel that competes with a product that he sells, but it also clearly aligns with a free-market perspective of not providing federal support for any particular energy sources. Furthermore, if it wasn’t obvious, Pickens would stand to make tons of money from increasing the use of natural gas in America, so its beyond disingenuous to pretend that he is solely “doing good.” [click to continue…]
Some GOP House Members may see no problem in pushing H.R. 1380, the Boonedoggle, Pickens-Your-Pocket Bill, which would hand out tax credits up to $64,000 apiece for the purchase of natural gas vehicles, because, after all, chief beneficiary T. Boone Pickens is a major donor to Republican candidates.
In The National Review, T. Boone Pickens again makes the case for The NAT Gas Act of 2011. I slept through the first few paragraphs (the piece began with a constitutional argument).
There isn’t a whole lot of new information in here, its more of a response to the ongoing attacks on the legislation. He reminds us that Americans get all antsy when gas prices go up, but when prices drop again we are lulled back into indifference.
The controversy over the T. Boone Pickens Earmark Bill, H. R. 1380, continued to grow this week. Three more Republicans joined Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM) in getting off the Boonedoggle Bandwagon and withdrew as co-sponsors. They are Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), and Tim Griffin (R-Ark.). The complete list of 187 co-sponsors can be found here.
A joint letter organized by Heritage Action for America and signed by seventeen conservative organizations opposing the bill was sent to the Hill. Pickens himself published an op-ed co-authored by flack-for-hire Denise Bode in Politico that was full of his usual blend of self regard, bluster, and misinformation. Pickens and Bode claimed in the op-ed that the House Republican Study Committee has endorsed his bill. It has not, and Politico quickly corrected Pickens. They also claimed that wind power is now cheaper than new coal-fired power.
I just finished watching the Sunday morning political talkies, and the second biggest ad buy of the day was in support of H.R. 1380, the NAT GAS Act, legislation that was produced by billionaire T. Boone Pickens to benefit the natural gas industry. T. Boone Pickens is a major player in the natural gas industry, so he basically made H.R. 1380 to make himself richer. That’s why this blog has referred to H.R. 1380 variously as the “Pickens Your Pocket Boondoggle Bill,” and the “T. Boone Pickens Earmark Plan.”
The advertisements I saw left me troubled. They indicated that T. Boone Pickens is less tone deaf, and therefore potentially more successful, than the last time he tried to get the Congress to enact legislation that he wrote to further enrich himself.
That was the 2008 “Pickens Plan,” and it was even bigger rip-off than H.R. 1380. The “Pickens Plan” was a simple four-step strategy: (1) subsidize wind produced by T. Boone; (2) subsidize transmission towers to deliver T. Boone’s wind power to cities; (3) force Americans to buy wind power produced by T. Boone; (4) force American motorists to fill their cars with T. Boone’s “leftover” natural gas, the stuff that was displaced by T. Boone’s wind power.
One hundred eighty-six Members of Congress have signed on to H.R. 1830, the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions (NAT GAS) Act of 2011, better known at this Web site as the Pickens-Your-Pocket Boonedoggle Bill, in honor of its chief lobbyist and beneficiary, billionaire T. Boone Pickens.
The bill would provide targeted tax breaks to subsidize the manufacture and purchase of natural gas vehicles, installation of natural gas refueling infrastructure, and production of compressed and liquefied natural gas for use as motor fuel. The bill includes no overall budget authorization. Moreover, many of the provisions modify current sections of the tax code, which in turn refer to other sections, and the Congressional Research Service inexplicably has yet to provide a bill summary. So the total amount of the tax breaks is anybody’s guess.
Nonetheless, the final tab has got to be huge even by Washington standards. Each manufacturer could claim credits of $4,000 per vehicle up to an overall amount of $200 million per year. Each purchaser could claim credits ranging from $7,500 to $64,000 per vehicle depending on how much the vehicle weighs. Each property installing natural gas fuel dispensers could claim a credit up to $30,000 (or $100,000 — it’s unclear). Each maker of compressed or liquefied natural gas could claim a credit of 50¢ per gallon for every gasoline-equivalent gallon sold. With anywhere from 225,000 to 400,000 18-wheelers sold in the USA each year, the vehicle purchase credits alone could cost billions.
T. Boone’s lobbying for these tax subsidies is all about patriotism and energy security and has nothing to do with rent seeking or corporate welfare. Just ask him! “I’m sure not doing this for the money,” the Texas Gas Mogul told New York Times columnist Joe Nocera. [click to continue…]
Republicans in the House of Representatives are flocking to support a bill to extend and create a number of taxpayer-funded subsidies for manufacturers and buyers of vehicles powered by natural gas. Nearly eighty House Republicans (and a hundred Democrats) have signed up as sponsors of H. R. 1380, the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act (or NAT GAS Act). Just call it the T. Boone Pickens Earmark Bill.
Many conservative Republicans in the House, particularly a number of new Members with Tea Party connections, have sworn that the fiscal and economic crisis confronting America requires a radical change in federal policies. Out-of-control spending must be stopped; spending earmarks must be abolished; crony capitalists on the prowl for corporate welfare must be sent packing; subsidies for special interests must be abolished; government must stop interfering in the economy and let free markets work.
That big talk doesn’t seem to apply when the spending is being earmarked for a crony capitalist who is one of the biggest contributors to Republican candidates in history–billionaire T. Boone Pickens. Apparently, some subsidies are good if they benefit the right special interests. And government interference in the economy is wonderful if it is done in the name of reducing oil imports.
H. R. 1380 would extend the tax credit of 50 cents per gallon of liquid natural gas (or its equivalent of compressed natural gas) when used for fueling vehicles and provide purchasers of natural gas vehicles with credits ranging from $7,500 to $64,000. The lower end is for passenger cars and the upper end for big trucks. There are also credits for natural gas vehicle manufacturers and for installing natural gas fueling stations.
With the current partisan fighting over oil subsidies (and energy policy more generally), its worthwhile to look at energy legislation that has found bipartisan support: the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2011 (the NAT GAS Act, often called the Boone Pickens bill). It currently has 180 cosponsors, split roughly even between Republicans and Democrats. Joe Nocera likes it.
True fiscal/small government conservatives understand the danger of using the tax code to steer the economy. It has brought us ethanol, subsidized home ownership for the wealthy, etc. Populist conservatives-in-name-only don’t actually care about applying consistent principles, or often let their concern be overshadowed by campaign donations.
Which is why I was surprised to see Representative Ron Paul, principled libertarian/free-market extraordinaire, as a cosponsor. I spoke to someone in Ron Paul’s office, and they explained (roughly) that support for tax credits (i.e., industries paying less in income tax relative to the status quo) is consistent with Ron Paul’s support for lower taxes.
This YouTube clip seems to explain Paul’s position (he was asked about a bill to end tax credits for the oil industry):
PAUL: Well, how do you define a subsidy? I don’t consider any tax break as a subsidy. That was not a spending bill, that was not a grant.
…
I never vote to increase any taxes. I vote to always give tax credits, and I always cut spending. I’ve never voted for a real spending bill, so, I don’t think that is in the category of something I’d consider a spending bill.
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