Drilling For Derangement

And the NY Post's Joe Mason has hit a gusher of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

The president and many in Congress are using this year's catastrophe in the Gulf to push for sweeping, unrelated measures that would punish not only the US oil and gas industry but the American economy as a whole.

Just last week, President Obama explicitly targeted the industry for two massive tax hikes. First, he'd ban oil and gas companies from using the "Section 199" tax credit, a measure for domestic manufacturers enacted in 2004 to boost US employment. (The Senate is set to vote this week on its version of the ban.) Second, he wants to end "dual capacity" protection for US energy firms.

Without this shield against double taxation on foreign revenues, American companies would be competing on an uneven global playing field. Again, Obama aims directly and specifically at the US oil and gas industry.

Yet, by the federal government's own economic model, these tax hikes would lead to huge, immediate job losses. I ran the numbers through the Commerce Department's RIMS II model; it shows, under the proposed changes to Section 199 and dual capacity, Americans would almost immediately lose more than 150,000 stable, private-sector jobs.

Wow, an immediate loss of 150,000 jobs from passing the oil drilling safety bill!  It's chaos!  Worst President ever!  Just like he cost the Gulf Coast hundreds of thousands of jobs with his drilling moratorium...

Oh wait.  Except that didn't happen.

When the Obama administration called a halt to virtually all deepwater drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon blowout and fire in April, oil executives, economists and local officials complained that the six-month moratorium would cost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Oil supply firms went to court to have the moratorium overturned, calling it illegal and warning that it would exacerbate the nation’s economic woes, lead to oil shortages and cause an exodus of drilling rigs from the gulf to other fields around the world. Two federal courts agreed.

Yet the worst of those forecasts has failed to materialize, as companies wait to see how long the moratorium will last before making critical decisions on spending cuts and layoffs. Unemployment claims related to the oil industry along the Gulf Coast have been in the hundreds, not the thousands, and while oil production from the gulf is down because of the drilling halt, supplies from the region are expected to rebound in future years. Only 2 of the 33 deepwater rigs operating in the gulf before the BP rig exploded have left for other fields. 

So ending the tax credit these oil companies are getting at the expense of you and me will immediately cost 150,000 American jobs?  Really?  One of those most profitable industries on Earth is complaining that they'll have to cut jobs if they can't make money?  Exxon Mobil made $7.5 billion profit just in the second quarter. We're supposed to buy that line of crap that the industry will cut 150,000 jobs if they lose their sweetheart deal on tax breaks?

Right.  They think you're stupid.