The Oil & Gas Industry Money Flooding Congress Is Pocket Change Compared to Enormous Profits

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/759578/the_oil_%26_gas_industry_money_flooding_congress_is_pocket_change_compared_to_enormous_profits_they_get_in_return/#paragraph3

The Oil & Gas Industry Money Flooding Congress Is Pocket Change Compared to Enormous Profits They Get In Return

Startling numbers of Americans are “underwater” -- homeowners and students alike -- and so, for that matter, is Congress, even if in quite a different way. In these last years, it’s been flooded with money. Millionaires, including at least 10 centimillionaires, now make up nearly half of our representatives there, and as a group, they have been growing ever richer as Americans grow ever poorer. Bad times? Never heard of them. Congress’s median net worth rose by 15% between 2004 and 2010 -- and this news, in a recent front-page New York Times piece, hardly caused a stir.

Of course, everything is relative. Compared to the giant energy companies, ours is a Congress of paupers. After all, the Big Five oil outfits (BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell) announced a combined $36 billion in profits in the second quarter of 2011. Exxon alone pulled in $10.7 billion (and spent more than half of those profits simply to buy back its own stock). In the third quarter, the same five companies returned for an encore. They made another $32.6 billion in profits, with Exxon at $10.3 billion (about half of which it again spent on stock buybacks).

Out of a deep sense of civic-mindedness, they and other oil and gas companies have, in turn, showered Congress with their pocket change. From 1989 through 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ invaluable OpenSecrets.org website, oil and gas companies gave Republicans in Congress $126 million and Democrats $42 million. Throw in a few hundred thousand dollars for the odd “independent,” and you’ve got $169 million dollars of pure oil and gas generosity over that period, which for them, as Jackie Gleason might once have said, is a “mere bag of shells.”

In case you’re interested, you, the American taxpayer, through Congressional subsidies for the oil and gas industry, reach deep into your own pockets and pony up billions every year to support those poor dears. And they turn around and pour what is, in essence, your money into the American electoral process to achieve the usual noble oil-and-gas ends. And just how well does all of that work? Here’s a little surprise: oil company political action committees (PACs) handed out $1.2 million to members of the House of Representatives in the first six months of 2011 and let’s not say “in return,” but -- consider it an unrelated fact -- 94% of the House members who received such funds voted to keep those industry subsidies flowing.