Lankford Moves to Keep Traditional Energy Tax Deductions Democrats Want to Cut after 100 Years

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CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on Rumble.

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today offered an amendment to the Democrats’ so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” of 2022 to exempt traditional energy cost recovery allowances, including percentage depletion, intangible drilling costs, geological and geophysical expenditures, natural gas gathering lines, and others from the book minimum tax. Lankford continues to push for measures to ensure traditional energy is not unfairly penalized through the tax code by Democrats’ progressive climate-change agenda, energy costs actually decrease for all Americans, and domestic supply is back up and running, despite Democrats’ demands in this bill to push their Green New Deal agenda. Lankford’s amendment, offered as part of a package of pro-traditional energy amendments, failed in a vote of 50-50.

Lankford also offered an amendment to take $1 million out of the health care slush fund for FY2023 and use it to maintain Title 42 authority at our southern border. The amendment failed by a vote of 50-50.

Transcript:

This is an amendment from Senator Barrasso and I. It’s very straightforward. If you’re a restaurant, you can deduct your business expenses. That’s normal tax code. If you’re a hardware store, you can deduct your business expenses. That’s normal operation. Since 1913 intangible drilling costs have been the tax deductions for oil and gas. IDCs, intangible drilling costs, since 1913 have been set aside for preparing the space, doing all the labor costs, the services, the normal business operations—for a hundred years until now. Slipped into this bill yesterday into the base text, strips away the tax deductions for oil and gas companies, what has been in place for over a hundred years. If you’re a wind farm, you can use renewable energy credits to take your tax rate down to zero because you can deduct your normal business expenses as well. If you’re a coal company, you could use 45Q, but if you’re oil and gas, your prices are going up. Americans should remember this bill when they fill up in the days ahead and when the people in their communities are trying to get a job with oil and gas.

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