America’s Renewable Future labels Senator Cruz of Texas “a career politician, doing the oil industry’s dirty work.”
In Iowa, America’s Renewable Future kicked-off an anti-Cruz effort with statewide radio, digital ads, and direct mail two weeks ago, the organization is building on this initial effort by releasing a new radio and online ads today.
“We want Iowans to know that, unlike what Ted Cruz would like to have them believe, he is a typical politician who will say one thing in Iowa and do another in Washington,” said ARF State Director, Eric Branstad, “His entire career he’s been in the pocket of the oil industry and he will continue to stand up for it against Iowa farmers and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).”
Cruz’s campaign is claiming that he is against oil subsidies, but he told an Iowan that subsidies for the oil industry don’t exist and another that tax breaks exclusive to the oil industry, like intangible drilling costs, are not subsidies. In the Senate, Cruz has introduced three bills to repeal the RFS and has consistently voted against measures that would close tax loopholes for the oil industry. The only loopholes he has supported getting rid of are “enhanced oil recovery credits for producing oil and gas from marginal wells”—in the Energy Freedom and Economic Prosperity Act of 2014—which are inconsequential since taxpayers would see no revenue effect from them according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
“Meanwhile Cruz has failed to introduce a single bill to repeal the $4.8 billion in subsidies that the oil industry receives annually,” said Branstad, “What’s worse is that he opposes the RFS because he claims it is a subsidy. But in fact, ethanol hasn’t received subsidies since 2011.”
Cruz has personal investments in oil companies worth close to a million dollars, and that his campaign has received $1 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry so far, more than any other presidential campaign. And that pales in comparison to the $25 million his allied Super PACs have raked in from the oil industry.
Category: Policy
