NPRA Says Defeat of Sanders Amendment Helps Preserve American Jobs

WASHINGTON, June 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Charles T. Drevna, president of NPRA, the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, said today that the 61 U.S. senators who defeated an amendment that would have resulted in tax increases to the domestic petroleum refining industry cast an important vote to preserve American jobs.

The amendment, defeated in a Senate vote Tuesday, was sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). It would have resulted in a number of tax increases to the oil and natural gas industries, including refiners.  

Drevna said the amendment "amounted to an assault on the tens of thousands of men and women – many of them union members – who work in 149 refineries across our nation, along with the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose jobs depend on refineries. Passage of this amendment would have weakened the industry that provides these hard-working Americans with jobs and strengthened foreign competitors, possibly leading to layoffs and the outsourcing of refinery jobs abroad."  

The amendment would have declared that, for the purposes of the Internal Revenue Code, America's domestic refineries are not "manufacturers" and are not entitled to a federal manufacturers' tax deduction available to all other domestic manufacturing industries.  

Drevna said the vote against the amendment "was a vote to preserve a domestic manufacturing industry that is critical to our nation's energy security and to the nascent economic recovery."

"NPRA members are clearly engaged in manufacturing," Drevna said. "Their workers convert a raw material – oil – into finished products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, home heating oil, jet fuel and asphalt. Domestic refiners compete in a vibrant and growing international refining industry every day to preserve our ability to supply Americans with American-made products."

U.S. refineries manufacture 90 percent of the gasoline and diesel fuel consumed in America.

SOURCE National Petrochemical & Refiners Association

WANT YOUR COMPANY'S NEWS FEATURED ON PRNEWSWIRE.COM?

440k+
Newsrooms &
Influencers

9k+
Digital Media
Outlets

270k+
Journalists
Opted In

GET STARTED