As negotiations on Republicans’ new major tax and budget packages take shape, anti-corruption, economic justice, faith, youth, and climate leaders gathered at a press conference with Rep. Ilhan Omar, Sen. Ed Markey, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, and others to announce “United to End Polluter Handouts,” a new campaign to end government giveaways to fossil fuel companies and their ultra-wealthy CEOs.

Speakers protested subsidies and handouts to fossil fuel corporations — bankrolled by U.S. taxpayers — that are raking in tens of billions in record profits and fueling climate disasters. Campaigners shared their plans to engage a major multi-racial, interfaith movement to redirect that money into community needs and services that benefit people and the planet. 

Republicans on Capitol Hill have made it clear they plan to cut life-saving community programs while simultaneously looking to preserve billions in government handouts for massive polluters over the next decade, as detailed in a new campaign report released today. These handouts include century-old tax loopholes, giveaways for future extraction on public lands and waters, and false solutions that prop up oil and gas projects decades longer than they would otherwise be financially viable.

The new report adds up giveaways to the fossil fuel industry, totaling $170 billion over the next decade. Examples include:

• Unfair deduction for drilling costs: Companies are allowed to add up the costs of developing an oil or gas well and count them against the company’s taxable income in a single year, thus reducing its tax bill considerably. This is a sharp departure from normal corporate tax accounting practices requiring companies to deduct similar investments over the life of the asset. Over a decade, domestic fossil fuel tax breaks such as this deduction add up to more than $35 billion.
• Tax dodge for overseas profits: Through a loophole called “dual capacity taxpayer status,” extractive industries misclassify payments to foreign governments as taxes rather than royalties, enabling them to take major credit against their U.S. taxes. This is a de facto subsidy for payments to some of the most corrupt regimes. In 2023, Exxon paid $7.4 billion in taxes and royalties to the United Arab Emirates, more than it paid in taxes to the United States or any other country. 
• Tax handouts just for Big Oil & Gas: All overseas oil and gas extraction profits are allowed to be repatriated back to the United States without paying any U.S. taxes. Such preferential treatment is not awarded to any other industry. Additionally, foreign income derived from transporting and refining oil and gas has been recategorized to be taxed at a 10-13% rate rather than the 21% statutory corporate rate. 

At the press conference and throughout the day in visits to Congressional offices, interfaith leaders staged a satirical action that entreats leaders to “remember in their hour of need the poor industry that has given us pollution, cancer, and most of all climate change.”   

Coalition and Congressional leaders provided the following statements:

“The fossil fuel industry has exploited our economy, our environment, and our political system while American taxpayers foot the bill,” said Rep. Omar. “We’re talking about $170 billion in subsidies over the next decade, money that should be going to our communities, not corporate polluters. Congress must put an end to these corrupt handouts and redirect our resources toward building a more sustainable future.”

“Every day, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and his minions are putting communities directly in the line of fire from polluters—handing over billions in fossil fuel subsidies to mega-wealthy Big Oil and Big Gas executives, while everyday Americans struggle to pay their energy bills and face the costs of rebuilding homes and communities after disasters supercharged by climate change, said Sen. Markey. “That’s why I’m introducing legislation to take back our hard-earned money from these billionaires’ oil-soaked hands and have them pay their fair share. Our future can’t be for sale to the looters and polluters.”

“If we don’t stop giving polluters corporate welfare, the planet will be increasingly uninhabitable,” said Sen. Sanders. “We have the courage to stand up.”

“Instead of addressing any real crises that America is currently facing, the GOP has made it their top priority to check off the wish lists of their industry friends and hand over taxpayer dollars to pad the pockets of Big Oil billionaires,” said Rep. Jared Huffman. “We have a choice: continue propping up a polluting industry that’s rigging the system against everyday Americans or use our resources to help the people we represent and invest in a better, brighter future. I know where I stand – on the side of people, not polluters.”

“The fight to protect lands, waters, and communities is more important than ever. Donald Trump is already gutting protections for public lands and wildlife”, said Rep. Melanie Stansbury. “He is decimating the fragile and vital ecosystems we have worked tirelessly to safeguard. We must all work together to stop corporate polluters and demand they pay their fair share. It has always and will continue to take all of us to protect all vulnerable communities from the effects of the climate crisis and encroaching corporate greed. It is time to step forward, fight, and get loud. I will be right there with you.”

“For too long, our government has handed out billions in subsidies to fossil fuel companies and their CEOs while communities across the nation bear the devastating consequences of pollution and climate change,” said Hip Hop Caucus President & CEO Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. “The United to End Polluter Handouts campaign is about putting people over profits and demanding an end to these reckless giveaways. It’s time to invest in clean energy, environmental justice, and a future that prioritizes the health and well-being of us all over corporate greed.”

“My mom passed away five years ago to the day of the Palisades Fire breaking out,” said Danielle Levanas, who lost her childhood home in the southern California Palisades fire. “Losing my childhood home in some ways feels like losing my mom all over again. The level of destruction the Palisades and Eaton Fires have left us with today is unprecedented. The disasters we’re seeing today are not natural. They are crimes. I believe we have a responsibility to the future generations to collectively come together and call out the injustice of fossil fuel companies. Massive government subsidies to the fossil fuel industry must come to an end.”

“Big Oil has for decades deployed its political power to generate a geyser of taxpayer handouts and subsidies—and the oil and gas corporations are coming back for more,” said Robert Weissman, Co-President of Public Citizen. “This time, however, a mobilized public is going to cap the taxpayer money flow.”

“We inherited climate change, but our movement refuses to accept a future that continues to prop up the industries that caused it,” said Zanagee Artis, the Founder and Executive Director of Zero Hour, a youth-led climate justice organization. “We need to end polluter handouts now.”

“Fossil fuel companies receive billions a year in government handouts and have enormous influence on our politicians and policies,” said Joseph Geevarghese, Executive Director of Our Revolution. “It’s time to stop subsidizing the industry that is polluting our democracy and killing us with toxic pollution and climate disasters.”

“Why not dole out billions in giveaways to an industry that has had daily profits of $3 billion for 50 years running?” asked Rev. Fletcher Harper, Executive Director of GreenFaith. “Why not subsidize wildfires and floods on a Biblical scale? Because it’s morally insane to do so, that’s why.”

More information about the United To End Polluter Handouts campaign can be found here.