John McCain wants to relieve everyone’s burden at the pumps by eliminating the federal 18.4 cent per gallon gas tax. I guess beggars shouldn’t be choosers, but as this Salon column points out, the idea is not w/o flaw:
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/04/16/gas_tax/index.html?source=newsletter
To say nothing of the fact that Big Oil probably wouldn’t even pass the savings onto consumers, just holding the price steady or increasing it (for the summer driving season) less than they would have otherwise. Which is something I guess, but its not worth shafting the budget for highway maintenance and improvement. Gas prices are much more nuanced a problem that axing the federal gas tax could hope to solve.
April 18, 2008 at 10:12 pm |
“Big Oil probably wouldn’t even pass the savings onto consumers”
Oh what classic liberal rhetoric, blame faceless big business, blame success. Blame Big Oil. They only employ hundreds of thousands of Americans, and they only pay our government billions in taxes, but of course, Big Oil is what is wrong with America. Big Oil is keeping us all down because they happen to have a product that everyone wants. How dare they do that. How dare they run a successful business. Classic liberal rhetoric — point out someone successful and tell everyone that the reason you don’t have everything you want is because that person over there is successful.
April 19, 2008 at 6:55 pm |
My intention was not to blame Big Oil per se, though I cannot help but notice the massive profits they are pulling in. I was simply stating that removing the federal gas tax will not necessarily cause gas prices to drop by 18.4 cents a gallon, that’s all. And even if it did, the difference between $3.599/gallon and $3.415/gallon is not that big and not worth shafting the federal highway budget. As I said in my original posting, high gas prices are a nuanced problem. I think Big Oil is part of the problem, but so are crude oil production rates, political instability in oil producing regions, refinery capacity, and the like. And I don’t want anyone thinking McCain’s tax holiday will be a cure-all.