Another view: End welfare for Big Oil

After announcing a quarterly profit of $3 billion last week, the CEO of ConocoPhillips said it would be "un-American" to end the taxpayer-funded subsidies that gave $4 billion in corporate welfare to the nation's five largest oil companies last year.

Four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline. Huge federal budgets. Yet these CEOs want more money from taxpayers?

It's time we end subsidies for the five largest and most profitable oil companies — which collectively raked in $32 billion in profit in the first three months of this year alone. Meanwhile, middle-class families struggle to make ends meet as they fill their tanks with $4-a-gallon gasoline.

Big, profitable companies do not need handouts from the government to expand their business. It would be one thing if they were using the subsidies to expand production, helping to lower prices at the pump.

But production levels are at an all-time high, and Big Oil companies have testified before Congress that they do not need incentives for oil exploration. Even when oil prices per barrel were much lower years ago, oil executives said they didn't need the incentives. Jim Mulva, the same CEO with the warped view of what it means to be American, testified, "With respect to oil and gas exploration and production, we do not need incentives."

Instead, executives at these companies are using profits to enrich themselves and their wealthiest shareholders. According to a recent report, Big Oil companies spent most of their profits in the purchase of their own stock and in boosting their dividends in the past five years.

Let's be clear: Voting to end these subsidies is the first item on a long list of actions we'll take to reduce our deficit and lower prices at the pump. We need to crack down on Wall Street speculators — who bet on the price of oil for their own financial gain. We need to take action against OPEC members that manipulate prices through collusion and price-fixing. And we need to end tax incentives for foreign oil over clean, home-grown sources of energy.

Anything else would be un-American.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, has authored legislation to end tax breaks for major oil companies.