Democrats drying up oil industry tax breaks

January 17, 2007
Democrats drying up oil industry tax breaks

WASHINGTON — When oil company executives came before the Republican-controlled Congress in 2005 to defend their record profits amid high gasoline prices, they were spared the indignity of being sworn in under bright TV lights, as the tobacco chiefs had been a decade earlier.

But with Democrats in charge, perhaps no industry will find the new Congress less hospitable
than the oil industry.

That will be underscored Thursday when the House is expected to approve a bill that would
repeal billions of dollars in oil industry tax breaks passed by the GOP-controlled Congress.