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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brian Renville" data-source="post: 79917" data-attributes="member: 256">President Barack Obama will submit a budget request to Congress next week that includes a requirement for oil companies to pay a $10 fee to the federal government for every barrel of oil they produce, the White House said Thursday. That's 33% of the current price per barrel.The administration claims the fee could bring in up to $32 billion in new federal revenue per year and would be allocated to highway infrastructure and research for cleaner vehicles. Jeff Zients, director of the Obama administration's national economic council, told reporters that the fee would be paid by oil companies, but they would inevitably pass it along to American consumers. He said the fee would be levied on imported oil products, but not on US oil exports in order to ensure a "level playing field" for US producers in the global market.Reaction from industry representatives and congressional Republicans was swift and immediate:The Independent Petroleum Association of America said in response to the proposal that "it makes little sense" to raise costs on the oil industry, which is now amid its worst financial crisis in 25 years." The IPAA added, "This is an energy consumer tax disguised as an oil company fee." The American Petroleum Institute estimated the proposed fee would raise gasoline prices $0.25 cents a gallon. API's chief executive Jack Gerard said in a statement, “The White House thinks Americans are not paying enough for gasoline, so they have proposed a new tax that could raise the cost of gasoline by 25 cents a gallon, harm consumers that are enjoying low energy prices, destroy American jobs and reverse America’s emergence as a global energy leader.”Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said the proposal was "dead on arrival" in Congress. "A $10 tax for every barrel of oil produced would raise energy prices- hurting poor Americans the most...President Obama is still on a mission to destroy a major backbone of the US economy...As this lame duck president knows, it's dead on arrival in Congress..."</blockquote>

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