Date:
6/1/2011 11:10 PM
Billionaire Texas oil man T. Boone Pickens is firing back against conservative critics who have called his plan for advancing natural-gas-powered vehicles a boondoggle.
In an opinion piece, Pickens makes a constitutional argument for the Natural Gas Act, which would create billions of dollars in tax credits to encourage motorists and businesses to buy the vehicles.
Those tax credits would mean “someone gets to keep more of the money he’s earned, rather than giving it to the government to spend on who knows what,” Pickens says. “It is not a government grant. And this tax credit, unlike many others, (would have) a sunset provision of five years.”
Pickens makes the case that the tax credit plan would help promote a domestic manufacturing capability for natural gas-powered vehicles and could help lessen U.S. dependence on foreign imports of oil. The increased energy security, he says, dovetails with the Constitution’s charge to Congress to “provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.”
“Absent a plan of their own, critics of my plan are for the status quo, which is to continue sending billions of dollars to OPEC nations, many of whom, in return, are helping to fund terrorism,” Pickens says.
Pickens is responding to attacks by fiscally conservative groups such as the Club for Growth and Americans for Tax Reform, which argue that industry-specific tax credits are bad economic policy.
The legislation has 188 sponsors in the House, even though four Republican lawmakers citing the same fiscal concerns withdrew their support last month.
Article source: http://www.cngnow.com/EN-US/NewsAndEvents/Pages/Tools/pageRedirectById.aspx?ID=441