Hypothetical: Democrats propose a windfall profit tax on energy companies

profiting from the rise in oil prices. Funds are used to support alternative energy sources and public transit, targeting rural America.

Good idea or bad?

...by raising prices on us.

Nice idea, but without regulations (there's that pesky "R" word again), it won't make any good difference.

if there's a windfall profits tax on them, especially if they're taxed at 100%. All their excess profits will go to the government, and energy companies are notoriously anti-tax.

Wow. BizarroWorld.

It will NOT play well with the public.

How about cutting government subsidies to energy companies? How about finding some other odious lump of pork to cut?

Dems will ALWAYS be labeled as "tax and spend" if we do stupid stuff like this.

I do think the Democrats should be rushing to take the lead on this issue, because the Republicans simply can't. But someone should.

There's two incredibly good reasons that pork exists.

A) The American people not only want pork, but they demand it. Don't believe me? Then why is it that every Congressman and Senator that brings home project money gets an immediate boost and is nearly immune to being defeated in their next election?

B) We need the vast majority of it. It keeps money circulating around the economy, creates jobs, and performs vital social functions (such as disease research or crime reduction studies).

Want to cut something? Start with war funding. But pork's not going anywhere and you damn well know it.

...but I don't agree that we need pork. There are plenty of ways to legitimately circulate money without $250M bridges to small nearly-uninhabited islands.

That was just one egregiously bad example of an abuse of power made by the Chairman of the Appropriations committee. But the VAST majority of the port is legitimate, as are the millions of causes that get rejected for "pork" each year.

Pork, to me, is money spent on projects that may be helpful to the local economy but harmful to the nation as a whole (like the $250M bridge).

There is plenty of monry spent on projects that both help the local economy and the nation as a whole (schools, libraries, road construction), but I don't consider them to be pork.

It's just semantics, I suppose.

My job is to actually obtain appropriations earmarks for colleges/universities, non-profits, towns, etc. Typically, we find everything is called pork, regardless of its actual value to the community and the nation, so that's where I was coming from on that. The vast majority of the funded projects are of vital importance to both the community and the nation. Usually, only the higher ranking members of the appropriations committee will slip through BS projects that don't do much of anything (which is what you'd call pork). That money isn't really going to put a dent into any budget, quite frankly, and if anything, it should be going towards any number of the thousands of unfunded projects each year (such as the one I've been trying to push through for a mental health treatment facility!)

excess profit of the oil companies while they're pockets are being emptied at the pumps.. are you kidding?

We should ALSO cut subsidies (which the media would call raising taxes anyway btw)

a poll!

So you'd be taxing people who are already streched thin by high energy prices.

The solution is getting us off oil and on to renewable domestically-produced fuels.