But that was not all. Grassley produced his manager's amendment just before the bill's passage. Approved without debate or roll call, it removed from the integrated oil companies the foreign tax credit that has been a founding principle of U.S. tax policy. Of the Big Five companies, only those based in the United States -- Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips -- are directly affected. They would be seriously disadvantaged against Russian, Chinese and French competitors in global exploration.
This was a classic stealth amendment. It was ignored even by the oil industry press, and the White House did not mention it in threatening to veto any tax bill with the accounting provision.
While there was no meaningful Senate debate, Grassley got an earful from his Republican colleagues for joining the oil-bashers. An Iowa farmer, Grassley is something of a prairie populist himself. Still, he privately blamed Sen. Olympia Snowe, a liberal Republican from Maine, for insisting on punishing oil as her price for granting the necessary vote to get the tax bill out of the Finance Committee.
That raised some doubt how hard Grassley will fight his House nemesis, Rep. Bill Thomas, in the Senate-House conference. Whether Grassley accedes on oil, the Senate bill has put Republicans in a difficult position of seeming to knuckle under to Big Oil if they drop the Senate provisions.
All this hardly seems justified by allegedly indecent profits. Highest oil earnings in the third quarter of 2005 were 9.8 percent for Exxon Mobil, compared with 33.2 percent each by Microsoft and Citigroup. According to filings with the federal government, oil and natural gas earnings for the second quarter of 2005 were 7.7 percent, compared with 19.6 percent for banks and 18.6 percent for pharmaceuticals.
What Chuck Grassley did in the Senate was petty politics if he was not serious and expected to be overridden in the House. If he was serious, Republicans should be asking themselves why they were given their Senate majority and what they are doing with it.