The Koch Brothers don’t like subsidies yet receive plenty of them

by Guest Blogger

July 30, 2014

Crosspost from Lukas Ross, Climate and energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth


Thats the message Friends of the Earth is sending today.

The controversy began this July when a mouthpiece for Koch Industries,, took umbrage with a League of Conservation Voters ad that aired in New Hampshire against Senate candidate Scott Brown, the Republican who won Ted Kennedys seat in 2009 and then lost to Elizabeth Warren in 2012.

What are [the Koch brothers] doing in New Hampshire?the ad asks. Backing ads to elect Scott Brown[who] voted to keep giving billions in special taxpayer funded subsidies to oil companies.

This didnt sit well with the Kochs. A representative of the longtime libertarianstersely repliedthat the brothers have been consistently against all forms of subsidiesfor oil or anything else — and that suggestions otherwise were inaccurate and false.


One of the worst is a tax break from 2004 that was designed to protect the manufacturing sector from outsourcing. Even though oil and gas producers are not really manufacturers and certainly not subject to the same outsourcing pressures, thedeliberately broadstatute allows them to claim a hefty deduction that is expected to cost taxpayers$17.3 billionover the next decade.


None of that stopped Koch Industries fromlobbyingfor the tax deduction and defending it inpublic. Even some of the organizations they fund are in on the action. Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party-affiliated group that is widely seen as the Kochs attack dog in Washington, has alsopublicly supportedit, claiming that people who call for its repeal are simply against energy independence.

If the Kochs and their surrogates spent half as much time lobbying against fossil fuel subsidies as they did lobbying against renewables, the US might have a very different energy mix. As it stands, they are mum on the destructive role of government support for oil, and yet surprisingly articulate on the evils of government support for renewables. Hence the brothers ongoing war against things like theproduction tax credit for wind and state-levelrenewable energy portfolios.

There will always be plenty of room for progressives and the Kochs to argueon everything fromclimate changetowomens healthbut the allocation of billions to already profitable companies could become a rare area of agreement. The only thing Charles and David need to do is take one small step towards bridging some of their past actions supporting oil subsidies with their newly clarified public stance. All they need to do is give the money back.




We Need Your Voice. Join Us!



Save the Amazon and stand with the guardians of the forest!

take action