U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden spoke to Bend residents Monday about a new bill that proposes taxing major oil companies, such as Exxon and Chevron, based on their profits.

The Oregon Democrat hopes the Taxing Big Oil Profiteers Act will encourage lower gas prices while combating gas price-gouging, he said at the news conference.

“You’ve got big oil companies running a money vacuum, profiteering, as hardworking Oregonians, here in Bend and elsewhere on this side of the Cascades, are suffering,” Wyden said.

The new bill’s contents include a stock buyback provision, an excess profits surtax and closing a loophole that allows oil companies to downplay their profits and defer taxes on those profits.

“The small businessperson, the mom who’s taking their kid to child care, our farmers: They’re going to be our first priority rather than wealthy oil executives buying back stock,” Wyden said.

Wyden is chair of the Senate Finance Committee. He is seeking a new six-year term in November.

The stock buyback provision imposes a 25% excise tax, which is a type of tax that focuses on a specific good such as gasoline, alcohol and tobacco, on the stock that oil companies repurchase.

The excess profits surtax adds a 21% tax on oil and gas companies that make over a normal profit, which is defined as a 10% return on expenses, Wyden said.

“I can’t imagine making 10% profits,” Dan Ellingson, a local farmer and a member on the Central Oregon Irrigation District board, said to Wyden at the news conference.

A pandemic, drought and now high oil prices have made agricultural life much more difficult than normal, said Ellingson, who has a 30-acre farm just east of Bend. His grandfather homesteaded there in 1906.

The necessity of petroleum, or oil, pervades almost every aspect of farm life, Ellingson said. Anything from PVC piping for farm improvements to chemical fertilizers and herbicides that become vital for growing crops in a drought to replacement parts for sprinkler heads comes down to oil.

“I think it’s a really good idea that we stand up to these oil companies and let them know that they’re killing families,” Mindy Corley, who sits on the board of directors and the lending committee for NeighborImpact, said at the press conference.

“Families are struggling, and they’re being forced to choose between going to work, buying food or taking their kids to school.”

In addition to Ellingson and Corley, Cassie Copeland, a counselor at Oregon State University-Cascades spoke to the ways higher oil prices have affected students’ lives.

Copeland, who offers guidance to low-income, first-generation or disabled students, said at the conference that one student she works with has to pick up extra shifts at work every week, which takes time away from studies, just to be able to afford to drive to class.

Wyden said at the press conference that this bill connects with his colleagues in Washington, D.C., because it’s a “different approach.” Taxing profits instead of oil prices, he said, is a way to lighten the wallets of major oil executives.

The Taxing Big Oil Profiteers Act comes just after Chevron and Exxon expressed their intentions this spring to buy back billions of dollars worth of stock by the end of this year and next year.

“Families are struggling, and they’re being forced to choose between going to work, buying food or taking their kids to school.”

Mindy Corley, NeighborImpact