the invited, is you guys are going to recite everything you are against and that there is no added wisdom if that. what do you make of that? guest: we are against any policy that harms economic growth. we realize we need revenue but we need to raise increased rest my by growing our economy. the worst possible thing we can do in this weakened economy is officer tax rate and that is all the president wants to do, that is what the democrats want to do, they want to engage in class warfare and i don t see how that helps our economy at all. it disspirits our society. we need to 70 vice people to achieve the maximum potential so increasing tax rateses is the wrong thing to do. neil: what about getting rid of allowances and breaks, and maybe, write offs that the oil
republicans hate that? neil: the president has indicated on the debt ceiling deal, the republicans say it is off the table, is it such, now, that, also, off the table are any adjustments in allowance or write offs in deductions, while not income tax hikes, per se, they are tax hikes. so, on the grounds with the family conservative types saying don t bend, do do. i think on the economic grounds. we chatted this before air. the tax break. you are such a regular passenger, of course, but that was a joke, a joke for the audience. seriously, you defended
from happening. we forget what our mentality was like in 2008 and 2009. we were worried about another depression and with good reason. what s wrong with that argument? because i don t think main street was heading down a this was a panic on wall street stirred up by bernanke and paulson, and a problem in the financial system where we needed to allow the correction to take place and the write-offs to occur. goldman sachs if they were going to go interrupt, they should have. that s just urban legend. we did have 700,000 jobs lost, a couple months in late 2008 09, but that was just the excess employment that had been created in the banks system, the housing market. houses that we didn t need. margin jobs in restaurant and pilates teachesers and whatnot.
these tax breaks get, other companies get them as well. for example, they get tax breaks write-offs for exploration, for writing off equipment, lots of tax breaks, and there are lots of other industries that get them as well. these tax breaks are in some cases 100 years old. who gave them the tax breaks? the very lawmakers grilling them today. they re paying $36 billion a year in taxes. that s an effective tax rate of 41%. when i say that, i m talking about local taxes, state taxes, federal, even international taxes. when you look at what these companies are paying uncle sam, the total tab per day, $86 million. what did ge pay last year? zip. yeah. ge with very close ties to the president and white house right now. the tax breaks, though, themselves, what are we talking about? how much money are we talking about that these oil companies get to sort of skim off of their
field no favor. the problem with what wear seeing out of the obama administration, the democratic party, we ll just cut these $4.4 tax preferences given to the oil and gas sector, while they re completely ignoring the cost to taxpayers of $16 billion for the corn ethanol scam. they re getting 130 times as much in the way of subsidies as the oil and gas business, and yet we don t hear anything about that. neil: i m curious with awful these tax credits, various write-offs and all, do they really change the game? in other words does it make any of the big guys particularly any more or less inclined to do what they do? well, i think that it s clear, if we had a situation, if we were able to repeal all of the energy subsidies and tax preventions. i don t think the hydrocarbon providers, the coal, oil and