Sarah Palin and Rep. James Lankford defended $4 billion in Federal subsidies to the booming oil sector, saying that giving billions in taxpayer dollars to profitable companies wasn’t fiscally irresponsible, since $4 billion is “just a drop in the bucket” when compared to the total deficit. Some drop: it’s 120,000% larger than the NPR funding House Republicans were anxious to eliminate in the name of balancing the budget. Thousands for public media: bad. Billions for oil barons: good.
BAIER: What about ending oil subsidies? Subsidies for oil companies. Where do you stand on that?
PALIN: Here’s where we need to go there nationally, what I did as Governor of Alaska, which is obviously an energy-producing state. As for the government subsidies that we’re hearing Obama flirting with right now, and wanting to decrease those or eliminate those, we’re only talking about four billion dollars. Compare that to the 14 trillion dollar debt that he our president has certainly contributed to.
(via Reddit)