Americans for Tax Fairness’s Hyperbolic Report on ‘BIG OIL’ CEOs Tax Savings Under Trump

A near hysterical press statement Tuesday from a group claiming to support tax fairness, says that “Big Oil’s” “Top 6 CEOs Could Save $15M+ from Trump’s Billionaire Tax Giveaway Bill,” deliberately omitting that nearly all Americans could save a lot of money if Congress extends and makes permanent President Trump’s tax cuts.

This is Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and Evergreen Action’s press statement:

Today, ahead of the Senate GOP’s effort to push through their billionaire-backed reconciliation bill, Americans for Tax Fairness and Evergreen Action released a new analysis revealing that just one of the Trump Tax Giveaways extended under this bill has provided the CEOs of America’s six largest fossil-fuel companies over $15 million in personal tax savings during its first seven years. This figure doesn’t account for numerous other loopholes and giveaways they could personally exploit. The bill also includes additional dirty-energy provisions that benefit Big Oil’s bottom line and industry donors by opening more public lands for drilling, weakening environmental safeguards, and preserving Big Oil’s sweetheart deals at taxpayers’ expense.

Someone very angry wrote that.

The Congressional Ways and Means Committee published a study by the Council of Economic Advisers which breaks down the significant tax savings for Americans showing that people from all income levels will benefit from making Trump’s tax cuts permanent.

The Council of Economic Advisers report emphasizes the important pro-growth effects that extending the Trump tax cuts will bring to American workers and small businesses:

• Boost the level of short-run real gross domestic product (GDP) by 3.3 to 3.8 percent and long-run real GDP by 2.6 to 3.2 percent.
• Raise annual real wages by $2,100 to $3,300 per worker.
• Increase real annual take-home pay for a median-income household with two children by roughly $4,000 to $5,000.
• Facilitate $100 billion of investment in distressed communities through Opportunity Zones.

The Council of Economic Advisers explains why the Trump tax cuts – the largest tax cuts in history – were and remain so important:

“The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was the largest tax cut in history and a
generational reform of the tax code designed to strengthen domestic investment, boost
economic growth, increase take-home pay, and reduce poverty. The TCJA lowered taxes
across-the-board for workers, families, and American businesses. Among its most
consequential reforms, the TCJA fundamentally reoriented the corporate tax system by
reducing the statutory corporate tax rate from one of the highest in the world at 35
percent to a much more internationally competitive rate of 21 percent—making it more
attractive for firms to locate in the United States—and by shifting the United States
from a worldwide toward a territorial tax system. This further enhanced the
competitiveness of American corporations and removed tax barriers to repatriating
foreign earnings. International tax provisions in the TCJA put an end to corporate
“inversions”, whereby domestic companies move overseas in search of a more favorable
tax environment.”

The Americans for Tax Fairness and Evergreen Action cherry-picked the CEOs of corporate oil companies who have significant incomes. They could have chosen the CEOs of climate change nonprofits Environmental Defense Fund, the largest nonprofit environmental advocacy group, EarthJustice, a leading environmental law organization, the Natural Resources Defense Council, an international nonprofit environmental organization, or the Evergreen Collaborative, a non-profit organization that works to preserve the environment.

As of 2022, according to their most recent IRS 990 form, the Environmental Defense Fund has net assets of $361,565,657, and received $284,762,302 in grants/contributions. The President of the Environmental Defense Fund receives $922,022 in salary and benefits. Imagine what he might save from the Trump tax cuts.

No one at the Environmental Defense Fund makes less than $200,000. They all will benefit from the Trump tax cuts.

The real beef Americans for Tax Fairness and Evergreen Action have with the Trump tax cuts is the reversal of the Green New Deal, passed under the name of President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

Read their statement carefully. Again, someone really angry wrote this:

“Republicans are hoping to pay for some of their massive tax giveaway mostly to the wealthy by repealing parts of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA made the single largest investment in clean energy in the nation’s history, paying for it with fairer taxes on the largest corporations and an investment in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to allow the depleted agency to once again collect unpaid taxes from wealthy tax cheats. The fossil fuel industry criticized the IRA for not doing enough to promote fossil-fuel production. Rolling back the IRA’s efforts to make renewable energy more affordable for consumers will help Big Oil sell more climate-destroying hydrocarbons.”

“The GOP bill also includes other dirty-energy provisions, both to raise revenue and in apparent gratitude for industry campaign contributions. These include opening more public land to drilling, mining and logging; rolling back leasing reforms; and weakening environmental reviews.”

So naturally they attack “Big Oil.” Americans for Tax Fairness and Evergreen Action are just having a gigantic tantrum having realized that elections matter:

“Under the House Republican bill, hundreds of millions of acres of pristine wilderness in Alaska, Minnesota and elsewhere must be made available for resource extraction.”

(“Resource extraction”: oil, gas, mining)

“It would also cancel reforms begun under the Biden administration to update leasing provisions–including rates, bonding requirements and minimum bids–to end sweetheart deals and get American taxpayers a fair return for the use of public land. Polluters would be able to pay for speeded-up environmental reviews that would render the process essentially meaningless.”

GASP.

Americans for Tax Fairness is one of many clients of Democratic online fundraising platform ActBlue Charities, Inc., and “is a coalition of over 400 endorsing organizations united in the effort to make the rich and big corporations pay a fairer share of taxes,” their website says. “When the wealthy and large firms start paying their fair share, we can build an economy that works for all of us, not just those at the top.”

In April the House Judiciary Committee, the Committee on House Administration, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a joint interim staff report titled, “Fraud on ActBlue: How the Democrats’ Top Fundraising Platform Opens the Door for Illegal Election Contributions.” This report reveals that ActBlue made its fraud-prevention rules “more lenient” twice in 2024—even though there is extensive fraud on the platform, including from foreign sources.

“ActBlue is a not-for-profit payment processor used by Democratic political campaigns at all levels of government and left-of-center activist groups to handle online contributions. The platform plays a vital role in the liberal financial ecosystem, having processed well over $16 billion in donations since its founding in 2004.

The liberal payment processing juggernaut, however, has been thrown into disarray. The New York Times reported on March 5 that at least seven senior staffers resigned in late February, including its top legal officer. The reason for the exodus is not yet known,” the Washington Examiner reported.

Sounds more like ACORN than a friendly taxpayer group.

Evergreen Action, and Evergreen Collaborative, founded in 2020, an advocacy organization with the strategy of decarbonizing heavy industry, founded by former staffers of Washington State Governor Jay Inslee’s 2020 presidential campaign, “is leading the fight to put bold climate action at the top of America’s agenda. We’re building the ambitious, actionable policy roadmap for an all-out mobilization to defeat climate change—and to create millions of jobs in a thriving, just, and inclusive clean energy future,” their website says.

They also say they are “Pushing for increased environmental regulations and enforcement: Through the Clean Air Act, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can regulate air pollution from industrial sources. Evergreen Collaborative is bringing attention to the fact that EPA has not updated its rules for decades and is pushing the agency to take specific action on updating New Source Performance Standards to include greenhouse gas emissions.”

Evergreen Action’s donate page says:

Contributions made through this page are 501(c)(4), which allows us to use them for advocacy, but they are not tax-deductible. If you would prefer a tax deduction for your contribution (one-time or monthly), please donate to Evergreen Collaborative here.

These are just “BIG GRIFT” organizations, hiding behind nonprofit status or 501(c)(4) status, using contributions to lobby, pay big salaries, but contribute nothing to the country. They build nothing, they manufacture nothing, they grow nothing; they only agitate and chip away at what makes America strong. They want vast amounts of public lands cut off to Americans. They want to kill the oil and gas industry, (which they actually need to build their Subarus and Priuses, REI tents and Birkenstock sandals). They want to cut off abundant energy sources. They want to force you out of your car, and to outlaw your gas furnace.

These are not nice people, as you can see from their statements. And they are not honest about their “advocacy.”