Obama Answers the “Gas-Tax” Holiday

Posted on April 30th, 2008 by ecthompson md

My father was fond of asking me if everyone was jumping off a bridge, would I jump. The right answer was always no.

Senator John McCain, in a very weak economic speech, offered voters a gas -tax holiday. In my opinion, this was a terrible idea. First of all, it would be difficult for the IRS to enforce a tax that is turned on then turned off. Secondly, it isn’t like gas prices would drop immediately although the public would expect gas prices to drop any day. Many Americans would start driving more, which would increase demand and therefore increase prices. Also, this tax holiday would increase the federal deficit by $11 billion with no clear benefit to anyone. Finally, gas tax money does go to fund highway projects. If we take that money away, aren’t we going to have to stop some projects and therefore fire some workers?

For reasons that are unclear to me, Hillary Clinton wasted no time in jumping on this bandwagon. The only difference is that Senator Clinton plans to pay for the budget short-fall with wind-fall profits taxes.

Senator Barack Obama has spoken out against the tax holiday. He believes we need a better solutions than a short term fix. Here’s Obama’s new ad. I like it and I agree this holiday is a bad idea.

Tags: Election 2008, Taxes // 2 Comments »

  • margaret

    The oil companies are trying to defend their huge profits and some in congress agree they should get to keep them for exploration. However, I remember about a year or 2 ago that they found a huge oil reserve in the Gulf of Mexico. It was suppose to be large enough to provide at that time 50% of the oil we use today. It was to take 10 years to get it up and pumping. How come we never hear about this anymore? Bush is pushing to allow the oil companies to go to alaska and tear up the land. When it has been proven there is only about 6 months supply there.

    I have to agree about the removal of the gas tax. At my office we all kind of laughed about it. How will the infrastructure get rebuilt if you take a chunk out of the budget. Let the bridges fall…..

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