Gas tax debate continues unabated, Hillary tries to defend herself
Photo by SEIU International. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.
Man, all this presidential candidate pandering is getting out of control. When John McCain first talked about saving the average family $30 on gas taxes over the summer by instituting a "gas tax holiday," it was easily pegged as a pretty dumb idea that wouldn't do much to help with the average family's budget or with America's addiction to oil. Still, calling for lower taxes is a time-honored pander in American politics, and McCain was soon followed by Hillary Clinton in singing the praises of the tax holiday idea. Her plan includes charging the oil companies $8b to pay for the tax holiday, which McCain's doesn't.
Clinton spent the weekend defending her support, and did so in a bizarre way. During an Indiana town-hall meeting, she did not give ABC host George Stephanopoulos an answer to his question about which economists support the tax holiday. Instead, she tried to argue that the lack of expert/economist support for the idea just means that "elite opinion" is against the working class on this issue.
Clinton and her Democratic rival, Barack Obama, continue to fight over the issue today, with Obama rightly calling the holiday idea a "gimmick" (although, as AutoblogGreen readers have pointed out, he did support a state gas tax holiday back when he was in the Illinois Legislature). In a CBS News/New York Times poll that was released yesterday, voters came out against the holiday: 49 percent said it was a bad idea, 45 said it was good.
[Source: Talking Points Memo, LA Times, Washington Post]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Throwback 12:59PM (5/05/2008)
I saw Obama on meet the press, and he said the reason he does not support the holiday is because it did not work in Illinois. The retailers simply raised prices to take advantage of some quick profits.
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rar 1:11PM (5/05/2008)
I don't think the 18cent gas tax will make or break the average household. But the 24cent tax on diesel could help out some small trucking firms. It could also help slow down the increasing price of consumer goods due to transportation pricing going up. Where I work, I see some freight bills were the fuel surcharge is 30 to 40 percent of the freight charge.
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1985 Gripen 1:13PM (5/05/2008)
Holy crud! ABG actually wrote a post pointing-out a Democrat appears to be wrong on something! Of course, we still have a ways to go as there's been nothing questioning how Obama plans to help people with the rising cost of fuel (and as a result everything else that is trucked or shipped or flown).
If we're going to point-out what a bad idea the gas tax holiday is (and I'm not disagreeing that it appears to be a bad idea), I believe we really need to question Obama on how he plans to help the average American afford the fuel they need.
By pointing-out the need for an fuel economy mandate by 2020 or need for more solar and wind plants and ethanol doesn't help people in the SHORT TERM. That's a long-term plan. What's Obama's short term plan to help people? This isn't being questioned. Or if it is, I haven't read about it at ABG.
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1985 Gripen 1:27PM (5/05/2008)
Jeez, just as I finished with that last post I've got CNN on and Obama's doing a stump speech about this very subject.
He advocates, instead of a gas tax holiday, other tax breaks of $1000 a year on people.
But what I don't get is if giving a 3 month gas tax holiday will put something like 6,000 people out of work and make our bridges and highways crumble, what's going to make-up for those tax cuts Obama proposes? The country is already in deficit. Where's that $1000 per person going to come from?
To avoid being attacked as being pro-McCain I'm going to point-out my point of view on all three plans:
1. McCain: though he had good intentions to help the average joe with rising fuel costs by proposing the fuel tax holiday after hearing from all the experts (economists) it will do little to actually help people in the short term and the loss in tax revenue will hurt highway funds. Also, cutting taxes when the country is already running in a deficit is probably not a great idea. The money has to come from somewhere.
2. Hillary Clinton: she jumped on the bandwagon without speaking with the economists that McCain failed to consult with. In the words of Obi Wan Kenobi: "who's more the fool: the fool or the fool who follows him?" However, Clinton plans to backfill the loss in tax revenue by punishing the oil companies for making lots of money. I see taxing these companies for making lots of money as wrong. It's a corporation's JOB to make lots of money for shareholders. That's what capitalism is about. You don't punish them for making money.
3. Barack Obama: He has long-term energy plans (like all of them do and all candidates seem to be singing the same tune on most of them), but the short term plans he has to help people seem more damaging to the overall economy ($1000 tax rebate per person? That sounds suspiciously like a George W. Bush plan to me).
So NONE of the candidates seem to have a solid plan to help folks in the short-term without doing either major damage to the highways funds or the overall economy, IMHO.
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Danielle Andre 1:41PM (5/05/2008)
I agree with your comment, 1985, it goes against our very ethos to punish a company for making money.
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Tim 2:14PM (5/05/2008)
Corrupt egomaniac elitist politicians pander for votes from ignorant, greedy fools who are easily bought & sold like sheep to the slaughter. Party is irrelevant.
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TG 2:34PM (5/05/2008)
I agree with *85 Gripen and Andre.
** He advocates, instead of a gas tax holiday, other tax breaks of $1000 a year on people. **
A sudden mass income cut to Uncle Sam would only push recession ever more quickly. Economics is not Obama*s long suit.
Far better to pay industry for doing their best to free us from oil addiction. Big tax breaks on EVs, wind farms, solar, and battery packs will help and Uncle Sam feels no loss due to the small scale segment enterprise. = TG
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GoodCheer 3:04PM (5/05/2008)
Gees, I'm usually more Pro Big Government than a lot of the folks here, but I have to ask:
Why is it the federal government's job to make it easy for Americans to buy gas?
I support policy structures that move the country in a direction I support, accounting for economic externalities like pollution etc., but this not one of those cases.
While we're all surprised to see gas near $4/gallon, its not like a significant fraction of our incomes goes into our tanks (yet). Do you pay more for gas or for health insurance, and which cost could you reduce by changing the way you live a little? Where's the real crisis?
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phil easler 4:10PM (5/05/2008)
You go Hillary!! A gas tax holiday is a Great idea for non-latta drinking working folks. Don't back down. Give us non-BMW drivers a break.
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GreyFlcn 7:33PM (5/05/2008)
Yeap,
Hillary for some reason thinks that just because every economist happens to disagree with her, they must all be "elitist" snobs who hate America.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/04/clinton-gas-tax-holiday-h_n_100025.html
At best her plan would be save $30 bucks over the whole summer. The price of two movie tickets. Woop-de-do.
More likely, Exxon could just as easily raise the price of gasoline 18.5 cents, and it would be like nothing had happened. Except that we wouldn't have any money to pay for maintaining our roads, and Exxon would have more money in the bank.
Kind of Bizarre how the black guy who grew up with a single mother, who had to go on food stamps, and only got into college off of scholarships and loans, is somehow the "Elitist".
online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120830244553617733-vleQbq1_IInjHSe4kG3qaJPngFw_20080515.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top
Meanwhile the lady who was raised in the lap of luxury, earned $109 million dollars last year, cheerleadered NAFTA, and worked in the for the union-hating corporate ranks of WalMart, is somehow an advocate of the "Working Class"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuZhwV24PmM
It's insane!
Then again, we've heard this kind of backwards black and white logic before...
“Clinton: Do they stand with hard pressed Americans who are trying to pay their gas bills at the gas station or do they once again stand with the big oil companies? ((Terrorists?)) That’s a vote I’m going to try to get, because I want to know where they stand and I want them to tell us - Are They With Us or Against Us?” ((WTF!))
thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/clinton-presses-on-gas-tax-holiday/index.html?hp
Hillary's bizarre rhetoric has nothing to do with reality. And it scares me when people blindly accept her arguments without even attempting to find out if they are true or not.
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GenWaylaid 7:44PM (5/05/2008)
GoodCheer,
Exactly! High gas prices are a problem without a short-term solution (other than driving and buying less, which doesn't help a weak economy, either).
The problem is that when no one can solve a problem, people reflexively turn to the government. The government can't solve problems either, but politicians are more than willing to PRETEND to have a solution in exchange for money, power, and votes. If that's the level of ethics we can expect, we'd be better off giving our tax dollars to email spammers.
It's to be expected that the candidates will jump to offer "solutions" to high gas prices, even if the solutions are worse than the problem. This campaign is about the Audacity of Hope, after all, not the Honesty of Knowing Your Limitations.
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GreyFlcn 7:50PM (5/05/2008)
==What's Obama's short term plan to help people?==
Easy. You earn less than $50,000 a year?
Then you don't have to pay income taxes on your paychecks.
(About $1000 per recipient per year.)
http://greyfalcon.net/incometax.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpYHYyJ4cOY
Additionally, Iraq+Afghanistan, thats costing us $3 billion dollars a WEEK.
That comes straight out of income taxes.
(About $12000 per US Citizen per year.)
So Obama's short term plan is to cut spending and cut taxes.
_
And before you start b*tching about "OMG SAFTEY"
We spend 29x more on Defense than the next nation behind us.
And according to every Intelligence Agency and the Government Accountability Office, our presence in the middle east is irrefutably making Americans "less safe".
http://greyfalcon.net/ciareport
greyfalcon.net/gaoreport
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GreyFlcn 8:06PM (5/05/2008)
==I support policy structures that move the country in a direction I support, accounting for economic externalities like pollution etc., but this not one of those cases.==
Gee, then what would be a good idea?
Removing income taxes from low wage earners, and moving in carbon pricing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MPWVJhD5Vo
Now which candidate is more likely to do something like that? Barack Obama.
greyfalcon.net/incometax.pdf
youtube.com/watch?v=XpYHYyJ4cOY
_
Oh yeah, and as for Gas Prices. One of the biggest consumers of gasoline? The US Military.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/02/military-feels-fuelcost-g_n_94765.html
And last I checked, Hillary voted to get us into Iraq. Today said she would Nuke Iran.
And she gets more money from Military lobbyists than McCain and Obama combined.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/10/17/defense-industry-embraces_n_68927.html
factcheck.barackobama.com/factcheck/2008/03/17/response_to_clinton_attacks_on.php
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Kevin Nugent 8:30PM (5/05/2008)
That gas tax will do little to nothing in the burn us Americans feel in out pockets. I would rather the price reach that 3;70 dollars a gallon . Then people "realize oh shit gas process are hear to stay so let me drive less". When that happens the price will go down and Americans will learn to live green . I woudl rather us the community do it by ourself than the government stepping in at every beck and call
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wayne 11:12AM (5/06/2008)
"Hillary's bizarre rhetoric has nothing to do with reality. And it scares me when people blindly accept her arguments without even attempting to find out if they are true or not."
Very very true. Scares me too. She will do anything to get elected, anything.
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revoltin' 10:03AM (5/06/2008)
We need to have a debate about the Feds having a 3 trillion dollar and growing annual budget. The gas tax is chump change compared to the total budget. It is absurd that we have allowed taxation to get so far out of hand, especially when we consider what little the Feds get done.
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Jon 11:01AM (5/06/2008)
Instead of windfall taxes or the moronic tax holiday idea, just get rid of all the tax breaks and incentives for domestic oil companies in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. That's $28 billion or so that was justified to increase domestic production. But with oil over $120/barrel and record profits, I don't imagine oil companies need any additional incentives and they certainly have all the capital they need. There's certainly nothing very "free market" about those incentives. So cut those giveaways and right there is a big chunk of change you could use to really help low-income Americans deal with the rapid changes coming down the pike, either through direct tax relief or investment in infrastructure, education, etc.
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boogieman 5:01PM (6/25/2008)
The tax holiday on gas psychologically mean something when you filled your tank with 20 gallons of gas. it would cost you $36.40 instead of $40.00. At least you might feel a little better
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