Clinton's Gas Tax Plan Called 'Ineffective', 'Shortsighted'

The Washington Post published yet another article today showing the negative reactions to Hillary Clinton's plan to suspend the federal gas tax.

A growing chorus -- including a top congressional Democrat -- labeled Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's proposal for suspending the federal gasoline tax ineffective and shortsighted yesterday, even as she continued to paint Sen. Barack Obama as insensitive to drivers' woes for not endorsing the plan.

Yesterday, HuffPost's Sam Stein published a comprehensive article about how Clinton has nonexistent expert support for the plan:

Surely, however, there must be someone out there not associated with a politician or a candidate who supported the idea of a gas tax reprieve -- especially if, as Clinton suggests, it would be paid for by an excess profits tax on oil companies.

I emailed Howard Wolfson, Clinton's spokesperson, asking him to put me in touch with an economic or environmental analyst who favored his boss' plan. He never wrote back.

So I took the task upon myself. I would call experts from all sides of the ideological aisle to get a sense of where the debate stood. In the end, every single analyst I surveyed judged the gas tax holiday proposal to be, roughly speaking, a silly, superfluous, or outright pandering idea.

Comments

[Kantinflas]

Clinton Bests Obama Against McCain in Swing States, Poll Says

By Joe Sobczyk

May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Hillary Clinton runs stronger than Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama in a match-up against Republican John McCain in the crucial swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, a Quinnipiac University poll shows.

[byrdlegs]

That's is all well and good, but Hillary won't be representing the Democrats in the general election.
Anyway, the DEMS lead of the Republicans is 51 to 33. McCain couldn't beat to tree stump. Not to worry!

[Kantinflas]

-- This year, the so-called "battleground" states which could go either way in the general election appear to be: CO, FL, IA, MI, MO, MN, NH, NM, NV, OH, PA, VA, WI. A total of 159 electoral votes.
-- RealClearPolitics (Election 2008 Latest Polls) lists head-to-head matchups, McCain-Clinton and McCain-Obama, for all the battleground states, except NH. Aggregately, the most recent state polls for each pair of match-ups through April 28 indicate Clinton would beat McCain by 1 electoral vote overall. Obama would lose by 97.

[BillyT]

And this has WHAT to do with her INEFFECTIVE and SHORT-SIGHTED GAS TAX POLICY??

[BreakingnewsJustintime]

"Huffington Post Comment Policy
We never censor comments based on political or ideological point of view. We only delete those comments that are abusive, off-topic, use excessive foul language, or include ad hominem attacks."

Dear moderator,

You might want to update this statement to reflect the new reality.

Just a thought.

BJ

[hydenorhare]

Hoo boy. You are soooo right.

[EinChicago]

""Huffington Post Comment Policy
We never censor comments based on political or ideological point of view. We only delete those comments that are abusive, off-topic, use excessive foul language, or include ad hominem attacks."

That is hilarious!!

[IowaKid]

This is the time for hard decisions not quick fixes with no relief down the road. Is this the history you want to leave your children and grandchildren.

[speakeasy]

If the gas tax is supposedly earmarked for infrastructure improvements, won't a gas tax holiday theoretically be a vote for another bridge collapse? Who needs terrorists when the sh*t's falling down all by itself...

[byrdlegs]

Gas tax relief means states wont be working on our roads and other infrastructure. Which leads to layoffs, which leads to higher unemployment, which leads to more welfare, which leads to possibly more crime, more emergency hospital visits due to lack of insurance, more kids without healthcare, sicker population resulting in higher costs in the end. When would you like me to stop?
All this for pandering for a few votes that wont do her any good. As you can see, McCain and Hillary come out of the same egg. Neither knows what is good for America.

[EinChicago]

And no gas tax relief means we won't be transporting as many goods, which means lower consumer sales which leads to even higher unemployment which leads to more welfare, which leads to possibly more crime, etc. would you like me to stop?

[maxwellinformed]

Did you guys see this Obama ad yet?

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/gasprices1

[AMJordan]

Well, that answers the question of what is his plan.

It's just not going to work. A tiny sliver of cake today will always beat a whole cake tomorrow.

There's no way he should be President, what with an actual ENERGY POLICY, one that isn't give all your disposable income to the oil companies.

There's no way he could win. Hillary is promising money right now for us to vote for her. Of course then she'll have to take even more money away from us to rebuild the bridges and roads that fall apart because of the lack of funding. HELL WITH IT..CAKE TODAY!!!!!! LOL

[TotobiAyokoh23]

Let us be clear here: Hillary's Gas Tax Plan is not meant for analytically curious, and reflective minds; it is meant for the unreflective, intellectu­ally-chall­enged gullible supporters who still believe in the Bosnia sniper fire fairy tale even after she has denounced and detested it.......

[jdenham]

Hillary your plan seems like a Republican plan to fix the problem. Cut Taxes. Hillary here is a clue as to why Gas prices are high.
1.) Commodity traders are holding oil futures to inflate the market then selling them.
2.) Oil companies are cuting back on production to inflate the market.
3.) The federal government is buying Oil for the Strategic Oil Reserve to starve the market, thus giving our taxes to Big Oil to buy oil at its highest price.
4.) Because Americans have no leadership to tell them we need to conserve energy.

Dont worry President Bush will release Oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve and the Oil Companies will lower prices as soon as we starting getting close to the November Election to take prices down to 4 dollars. Which by that time we will think that is a bargain.
But Hillary you already know that dont you.

[rwe2late]

jdenham
So true!
We are witness to the biggest rip-off and transfer of wealth upward in world history.

Hopefully, the strategic reserve will only be used to dazzle voters in November, and not as part of Cheney's planned attack on Iran.

[EinChicago]

I agree. The single biggest way government could affect gas prices is through use of the strategic oil reserve. If the govenrment announced, with notice, that it was going to (a) temporarily stop filling the strategic oil reserve, and (b) announce a program where they would, on short notice, say 12 hours notice, release portions of a pool of 150 million barrels of oil at an auction rate of $30 per barrel only available to U.S. refiners for sale and use only within the U.S., two things would happen:
(1) there would be a sudden shock to oil prices causing the hedge fgunds currently driving prices up to take painful losses,
(2) the unpredictability would drive a lot of the speculators out of the oil market and back into other forms of investment such as treasuries or equitiies.

[Lemeritus]

BINGO!!!!!!!

But! We don't even need to TAP the Strategic Oil Reserve. All we have to do is REFUSE to add to the reserve, even for as little as a month. That would kick the three-legged stool right out from under the speculators that are really driving the cost of oil

[Lemeritus]

Great grasp of the overall picture, jdenham! If America stopped buying oil for the SOR (for even a month), we'd see an almost miraculous correction in cost per barrel. Meanwhile, Bush sings the blues about how the oil companies haven't opened a new refinery in over 30 years (with all their profits and tax breaks, why not?) and Clinton and McCain float a totally ridiculous gas tax holiday idea!

[thegreatgiginthesky]

Clinton and McCain, pushing pennies for America.

[donttasemebro]

The chances of the idiot in chief not vetoing a bill that includes tax hikes for big oil are zero, and Hillary knows it. She is counting on voters' uninformed knee-jerk reaction: "18 cents less a gallon. That sounds good to me." IT IS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN! This is nothing but pandering of the worst kind.

[AMJordan]

If she puts this through when she's President, then Bob's Yer Uncle.

[somekid1234]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20306341/the_queen_of_pork

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20306341/the_queen_of_pork

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20306341/the_queen_of_pork

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20306341/the_queen_of_pork

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20306341/the_queen_of_pork

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20306341/the_queen_of_pork

[NCMan]

Obama is trying to make it appear that the proposal from Clinton on the gas tax holiday is the same as McCain's even though Hillary proposes to pay for her plan and replace the money that would be lost in the highway fund using windfall profits taxes on the oil companies. It is McCain who wants the tax holiday and provides no means to replace the lost revenue into the highway fund.

Also, Obama is trying to paint this as Clinton's olny plan for energy which isn't true. She is proposing this in ADDITION to her long term plans for energy.

[donttasemebro]

An how is she going to get the White House to sign off on her windfall profit tax?

[BillyT]

Even just the thought of this foolish idea is enough to show she PANDERING again.

this is a plan that will not save anyone any money. It will bring that money directly to the pockets of Exxon, Shell, BP, and OPEC.

Read this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/opinion/30friedman.html?em&ex=1209787200&en=c74689f177717558&ei=5087%0A

[99hockeyman]

Then when you tax the windfall profits the gas prices will go higher to make up that revenue that is being taxed. Just because thereis a gas tax holiday does not mean prices at the pump will go down. Those prices will stay the same.

[javaman]

hillary panders to emotion while Obama actually comes up with ideas.

[rollingdivision]

Since there are so many benefits from gasoline taxes, when will Obama propose increasing gasoline taxes to increase all the benefits?

[thegreatgiginthesky]

Look at that bridge, do you want to cross that bridge?

[hip dibler]

go ahead super delegates. nominate hillary. i dare you.

[rwe2late]

How exactly do either Hillary or Obama expect to “reach across the aisle” and work with Republicans?? Bush and the Republicans oppose every meaningful solution to every problem, from energy to Iraq, and only seek to further enrich their elite constituency.

You can’t have it both ways. When are Hillary and Obama going to cut the crap about the imaginary problem of stubborn politicians that can’t work “together”?


McCain/Bush and Hillary all support a retail gas tax “holiday” that nearly all experts agree is most likely counter-productive, or at best accomplishes nothing meaningful.

McCain/Bush OPPOSE raising any tax on oil corporations, or submitting them to government control.
So, Hillary falls into the trap, and now the debate is no longer about what the oil companies are doing, but about whether to give a $50 tax break to car drivers and truck companies.


A while back Bush proposed an energy “plan” which had as its linchpin the promotion of bio-fuel, which nearly every expert now agrees, just as many predicted, is now driving up the world price of food. Again, it accomplishes nothing significantly worthwhile.

Both Obama and Clinton have supported Bush’s bio-fuel “final solution”.

http://obama.senate.gov/podcast/060511-a_real_solution/
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/speech/view/?id=4059

Do they still think it is such a good idea to “work with Republicans” and settle for half-baked solutions that only preserve the status quo?

[Softnsweet]

rwe2late,

You better do some more research on that one.