It’s oil vs. gold in a Senate smackdown involving Vitter

It’s Big Oil versus gold in a corporate subsidies smackdown between Louisiana Sen. David Vitter and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Last week, Reid began urging his colleagues to support legislative efforts to cut off government subsidies to oil and gas companies. That prompted Vitter to shoot back, urging Reid to consider a comparable cutback of tax breaks to the gold mining industry. Reid’s home state of Nevada produces about 80% of all gold mined in the U.S., and the precious metal has soared to all-time highs of more than $1,500 per ounce in recent weeks. “I would suggest and hope that you would, at the very least, uniformly apply your policy choices to all industries that receive tax breaks,” Vitter wrote, “instead of continuing the Obama Administration’s irresponsible pattern of picking winners and losers that has done very little to stabilize our economic recovery.” Reid spokesman Zac Petkanas shot back, telling the Las Vegas Sun this: “I’d want to change the subject too if I had to defend billions in government giveaways to Big Oil corporations with gas prices so high in Nevada and across the country.” To read the full text of Vitter’s letter, click here. To read more in the Las Vegas Sun, click here.