Want to kill 150,000 high-paying union jobs?

Continuing his assault on the oil and gas industry, Obama is proposing significant tax increases targeted directly at our domestic producers. So blinded by Gore's faulty environmental boondoggle, and his ties to the extremists in the Green movement, he is willing to destroy the only opportunity we have for gaining some semblance of energy independence and reducing our foreign balance of payments deficit and the reliance on our enemies for oil.

Excerpt: Just last week, President Obama explicitly targeted the industry for two massive tax hikes. First, he’d ban oil and gas companies from using the “Section 199″ tax credit, a measure for domestic manufacturers enacted in 2004 to boost US employment. (The Senate is set to vote this week on its version of the ban.) Second, he wants to end “dual capacity” protection for US energy firms.

Without this shield against double taxation on foreign revenues, American companies would be competing on an uneven global playing field. Again, Obama aims directly and specifically at the US oil and gas industry.

Changing the tax code would not only have resulted in much less revenue than projected thanks to falling sales and some relocations of companies, but also lower overall revenues thanks to higher unemployment.

In an economy like this, we should be looking to create new jobs, not destroy existing positions. This is a childish attempt to punish the energy sector not for any particular failing but simply out of antagonism on one hand and a redistributive impulse on the other. If Obama wants to pay for his new tax breaks, which are estimated to cost around $120 billion, then perhaps he can cut part of the $1.1 trillion in new annual spending from Democrats over the last three years. He’d do better at economic stimulus if he cut all of it than by destroying another 150,000 skilled jobs. Want to kill 150,000 high-paying union jobs?