s most conservative Republican members. But some are crying foul over the special treatment that the government would be providing to the natural gas industry, arguing that it is not Washington’s role to “choose winners and losers” by offering tax credits to promote one energy industry over another. The bill’s proponents, however, say promoting natural gas — a plentiful resource in the United States — will help wean the country off foreign oil, provide resources to alternative energy sources and increase the nation’s energy security.
A coalition of nearly two dozen free-market and conservative groupsto members of Congress in March urging them to avoid new subsidies and tax credits, and they plan to blast anyone — especially Republicans — who do.
The divide is so deep in fact, that it has even split the libertarian advocacy group Campaign For Liberty, a co-signer of the March letter, with its founder, Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul, who is co-sponsoring the tax credit bill. Paul , arguing that they are not subsidies, as his critics would call them, but rather another form of tax reductions.
“I don’t consider any tax break as a subsidy. That was not a spending bill, that was not a grant,” Paul said, referring to tax credits for oil companies, a separate bill that Congress plans to take up soon. “I vote to always give tax credits, and I always cut spending
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