Hillary Hits the Gas

Hillary Clinton isn't backing down. She's got a terrible idea, and she sticking to it. The idea, one she shares with John McCain, is to give drivers across America a gas tax holiday, despite a universal outcry from economists, environmentalists, fellow politicians, and superdelegates that the proposal amounts to nothing more than a disastrous, and shameless pander to voters.

That's not stopping Clinton, who yesterday reiterated her claim that her proposal would do what everyone with a modicum of common sense knows it won't. At a rally in Indiana, Hillary employed George Bush's black-and-white, either-or rhetorical framework. On the gas tax, you're either with the people, or you're with the gas companies:

"I believe it would be important to get every member of Congress on record," Clinton told a rally in southern Indiana. "Do they stand with the hard-pressed Americans who are trying to pay their bills at the gas station or do they once again stand with oil companies?

"I want to know where people stand and I want them to tell us, are they with us or against us when it comes to taking on the oil companies?" she added.

Clearly, Clinton has not read a newspaper or gone online lately.
The two most powerful House Democratic members, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer have been pretty blunt about their views on the idiotic "holiday." Pelosi:

"There is no reason to believe any moratorium on the gas tax will be passed on to consumers. That's first and foremost," she said. "Second, it will defeat everything we've tried to do to lower the cost of oil."

Hoyer:

"A suspension of the tax would not be positive. The oil companies would just raise their prices."

So the game of legislative chicken isn't going so well. It seems that on this issue at least, Clinton's bet (and that old Republican trick) that fearful Democratic lawmakers won't want to be viewed as not cutting taxes, will fail. If anything, it says something about just how bad this proposal is that it is being so soundly discounted. Here's New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

"It's about the dumbest thing I've heard in an awful long time, from an economic point of view. We're trying to discourage people from driving and we're trying to end our energy dependence... and we're trying to have more money to build infrastructure... ...The 30 bucks is not going to change anybody's lifestyle," he said. "The billions of dollars that we would otherwise have in tax revenues can make a big difference as to what kind of world we leave our children."

Here's Thomas Friedman, writing in The New York Times, on the prospect of what would happen should Clinton's holiday actually become reality:

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we'll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars--burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

While the American taxpayer might save $20 to $30 over the summer, the nation's Highway Trust Fund, which already faces a funding deficit of $2-$3 billion, would lose as much as $10 billion more without the gas tax. But crumbling infrastructure really isn't a big problem, is it?

The crowning irony of the plan is that it is the oil companies, not the consumers, who are more likely to benefit from the three month long suspension in taxes.

Let's face it. Hillary Clinton and John McCain can dangle that twenty dollar bill out in front of American voters as much as they like, the gas tax holiday ain't going to happen. Nor should it. We should all see this proposal for what it is: lousy leadership.