Boehner: [Multi-billion dollar subsidies to oil companies are] certainly something we should be looking at. We’re in a time when the federal government’s short on revenues. [Oil companies] ought to be paying their fair share.
Obama: Dear Speaker Boehner, Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, and Representative Pelosi: I am writing to urge you to take immediate action to eliminate unwarranted tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, and to use those dollars to invest in clean energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. […] I was heartened that Speaker Boehner yesterday expressed openness to eliminating these tax subsidies for the oil and gas industry. Our political system has for too long avoided and ignored this important step, and I hope we can come together in a bipartisan manner to get it done.
Boehner through spokesman: Unfortunately, what the President has suggested so far would simply raise taxes and increase the price at the pump.
Day: April 26, 2011
I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.
[…]
What we ought to be doing is inventing a whole series of breakthrough mechanisms that create incentives for people to have a better environmental outcome in an economically positive way, to accelerate the transition to better and cleaner technologies.
Disgraced former Speaker Newt Gingrich, speaking in 2007.
Lemkin 