Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing with executives from the world's five largest private oil companies. One of the main topics of the hearings was how the oil companies could justify the billions of dollars it saves every year in tax breaks while simultaneously recording record profits. According to the Associated Press, “Democrats accused the oil companies of not paying their share to help the country emerge from economic hard times. Republicans derided the hearing as a dog-and-pony show staged to score political points.” But Republicans were not the only ones going to bat for the oil companies. The right-wing partisans at Fox also bravely stood up to defend the tax breaks for oil companies.

The hearing culminated a weeks-long campaign by the right-wing media to defend the oil companies at all costs. First, they promoted the false claim that proposing and end to the subsidies is tantamount to "[coming] out in favor of even higher gas prices." They also attempted to deflect criticism by attacking subsidies on wind and solar energy, despite the fact that those subsidies are miniscule by comparison. But on this morning's Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade took a new tactic and dismissed the proposal to end tax subsidies for oil companies as “a feel good move for people who think we're spending too much.”

So ending billions of dollars in subsidies is a “feel good move” and won't really have any effect on spending. Funny, Fox was very recently singing a different tune when congressional Republicans tried to end subsidies for NPR and Planned Parenthood. On April 20, Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy complained that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi commented on oil subsidies but didn't “mention the big subsidies to NPR or Planned Parenthood...while she was at it.” Hannity claimed “we can't afford” to keep subsidizing NPR. Bill O'Reilly said “it's hard to believe liberals want to continue funding things like public broadcasting [and] Planned Parenthood.”

Got that? NPR and Planned Parenthood subsidies are unaffordable, while oil and gas subsidies won't really do anything but make people who think we spend too much “feel good.” So naturally the NPR and Planned Parenthood subsidies must be much bigger, right? Well, not quite:

If there's one thing that Fox's “coverage” of subsidies makes clear, it's that their fake outrage over debts and deficits will always take a back seat to their partisan hackery.