Romney open to nixing oil industry tax breaks

Mitt Romney said at Wednesday night’s first 2012 presidential debate that billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil-and-gas companies would probably have to be jettisoned under his plan to lower corporate tax rates overall.

Romney’s plan calls for lowering the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. “Of course it is on the table. That is probably not going to survive to get that rate down to 25 percent,” Romney said of the oil industry tax breaks at the University of Denver event.

He spoke after Obama reiterated his calls for nixing tax breaks for oil companies; Obama said Exxon Mobil doesn’t need the money.

Romney noted that much of the incentives flow to smaller companies, not the industry’s behemoths like Exxon, before noting that the tax breaks would be on the table in his plan to lower rates overall.

The former Massachusetts governor also pivoted to bashing the increased federal support that the Obama administration has provided to green energy companies. The 2009 stimulus law included tens of billions of dollars for alternative energy programs.

Romney cited the bankruptcy of the California solar panel company Solyndra, which collapsed in 2011 after receiving a $535 million Energy Department loan guarantee in 2009, and also cited the woes of several other administration-backed companies.

“I had a friend who said you don’t just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers,” Romney said.

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