Why not tax oil companies for their windfall profits?
Miller, the state legislator, said a windfall tax could be effective if the money was used to invest in developing more fuel-efficient automobiles or similar measures. He said a more effective measure to raise money would be to cut the multibillion-dollar tax breaks the government gives oil companies for exploration. Severin Borenstein, who heads the University of California Energy Institute in Berkeley, said the government also could increase the amount of royalties it charges companies that extract oil from federal lands. “The government currently does a very poor job of getting taxes from that,” Borenstein said.