Oregonian: Voters deserve better than McCain/Clinton gas tax pandering

Charlie Burr

From today's Oregonian:

Sen. John McCain's idea to give Americans a summer holiday from federal gas taxes is about as weighty as a Barbie Dream Car, yet he can't stop driving it into the ground.

Neither can Sen. Hillary Clinton. The two presidential contenders can't resist the chance to pander to voters and, as a bonus, paint Sen. Barack Obama as an elitist. By doing so, they're missing an opportunity to show leadership on some major long-term challenges -- such as updating the nation's crowded roads and aging bridges.

McCain's idea is problematic on several levels. First, it would begin and end several months before the next president takes office, so it's more of a thought balloon than a plan. Second, the tax relief would save the typical American family only about $40 per car, while also siphoning $10 billion from the cash-strapped federal highway fund.

What's more, leading economists say the tax break would do little to lower the prices at the pump. More likely, the slightly lower prices would lead to higher demand, which would push the prices back up, allowing oil companies to make more money while federal tax coffers go hungry.

We agree with Obama on this issue. He calls it a short-term fix that benefits oil companies rather than consumers, and says it creates the illusion of leadership without actual change. But we also expect more from McCain, an independent thinker who rarely resorts to such political gimmicks.

Most of all, voters deserve better. They deserve candidates who will concede that the federal gas tax hasn't budged for 15 years -- and that the nation's roads, bridges and railways are suffering as a result. They need candidates who will look beyond the nation's borders and address the falling dollar and the global demand for oil, two factors that are far more powerful than an 18-cent tax.

Discuss.

  • Bill Bodden (unverified)
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    Other than this BS - But we also expect more from McCain, an independent thinker who rarely resorts to such political gimmicks. - the Oregonian's editorial makes a lot of sense and helps distinguish Obama from his phony opponents. How much longer will it take these blockheads in the media to realize McCain is not an "an independent thinker who rarely resorts to such political gimmicks"? The poor wretch has sold his soul and repeatedly pandered to anyone who will support him.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Where does The O get $40? Even that seems inflated. This proposed tax holiday would only last 94 days. The tax savings is only 18.4 cents per gallon. The average American uses 500 gallons of gas per year, according to the Department of Energy (admittedly, it's on the "kids' facts" page, but they don't have a "grown-ups' facts" page). That makes this tax holiday a $23.69 gimmick that won't improve anyone's quality of life. How much more definitive an example of "phony populism" could one imagine?

  • Katy (unverified)
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    I kind of think voters deserve better than Obama's vote on the energy bill, but maybe that's just me?

  • james r bradach (unverified)
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    Take your holiday Katy, good night and good luck.

  • Katy (unverified)
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    James, so you're simply willing to dismiss that vote?

  • Daniel Spiro (unverified)
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    Just two words to think about here: global warming.

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    I agree with Katy - if anyone's pandering here it energy-industry-boosting, let-the-people-pay Obama.

    A gas tax break is not the only measure Hillary has proposed and it's myopic of the Oregonian to take it in a silo like that. In conjunction with short-term breaks for consumers she was the first candidate in the pack to propose a large-scale strategic fund for green energy development, an end to subsidies and special tax loopholes for the oil industry (and she's put her vote where her mouth is, voting against corporate subsidies in the Senate on numerous occasions), and also having the most comprehensive and agile plan for economic recovery.

    Weak piece, Oregonian; sorry Charlie.

  • james bradach (unverified)
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    Proposing a tax holiday is a far cry from actually getting one passed. You can say a lot during an election with no intention of having it come to reality. I'll have to pay better attention because I thought Hillary was going to go after funding for infastructure, which would create quite a few jobs out here. I don't think she realy wants to take $10 billion from highways. I want to drive to Alaska this summer and it might make that possible! We all have dreams.

  • james bradach (unverified)
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    That energy bill did suck, your right but I am not upset that it got Obama's vote. There is a lot of room for improvement. I agree with his statements on this tax holiday. Anybody remember the word conservation?

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    I'm a Republican and a McCain supporter, but I think the gas holiday both he and Hillary are proposing falls under the "How Stupid Do They Think We Are?" category of political pandering.

    Frankly, the best thing that can be said of it is that the 18 cents per gallon savings isn't enough to actually benefit consumers. If it were a real cost savings, it would simply stimulate consumption at a time when we should be encouraging conservation (which, of course, is what high prices do).

    This idea is so obviously stupid even Clinton's Kool-Aid-Drinker-in-Chief Paul Krugman has criticized it.

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    Amen. Pandering of the worst kind! We should tax carbon not cut taxes on gasoline. Cut other taxes. Create the right incentives!

    Thomas Friedman’s NY Times Op-Ed “Dumb as We Wanna Be” gets it right: (here)

    “This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

    “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…..”

    “The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.”

    Senator Clinton has a 30 second ad out touting the gas tax holiday. To the see her in full pandering mode go here.

  • pdxatheist (unverified)
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    it's beautiful: all over the web now, any economist with half a brain agrees with obama's take on this. even the mccain supporter can see this for the big fat red herring it really is. lop off 2 bucks a gallon, now that's a savings that might help, but even if it were that substantial, all it would do is kick the can down the road for a few months, and totally ignore the larger problem, which is that we need to be driving less anyway. this is a boneheaded, pandering proposal if there ever was one, and most people can see right through it.

  • backatcha (unverified)
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    Let's see: Cutting taxes on (and thereby increasing use of) a product we know pollutes the air, groundwater and....oh yeah, contributes to global warming, while at the same time cutting revenues for the underfunded federal Highway Trust Fund, which is mostly used to maintain and repair our existing infrastructure (like the Sellwood bridge).

    Sounds like a perfect GOP recipe for more future fiscal disasters. I expect as much from John "no economist" McCain, but Senator Clinton should know better.

    Katy, as far as Senator Obama's supposed support of the 2005 energy bill goes; didn't we already have that discussion earlier this month? http://www.blueoregon.com/2008/04/clinton-obama-a.html

    Unlike the current White House occupant, Senator Obama has consistently backed dramatically increasing support for renewable energy production, and returning siting of production facility decision-making to the states. He and Senator Clinton are both co-sponsors of a bill to overule the 2005 Act and do the latter.

    Don't know why that should be a problem.

  • Noelle (unverified)
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    Band aid solutions are all they have to offer?

  • Bill Bodden (unverified)
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    This so-called tax break says something about the three major candidates for president. McCain and Clinton chose to pander in defiance of sound economists. Obama chose not to go that route even though he must have known the poorly-educated masses would buy into it. McCain and Clinton probably thought a version of one of H. L. Mencken's dicta would apply: No one ever lost an election underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

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    Seems to me that the headline here is that Obama is true to his rhetoric.

    Since he started his campaign his central argument has been that rather than targeting the voters impulses and feelings, the ethical politician would appeal to the reasoning centers of the old gray matter. Pretty high minded idea and to me, a big gamble. Nonetheless, when this issue came up he stood out from the conventional wisdom crowd and told it to the voters based on the facts.

    So far this effort to throw HL Mencken's truism (Nobody ever lost a dime underestimating the intelligence of the American people) out the window has been surprisingly well received.

    People may need quite a while to retrain themselves to actually ....you know.....think rather than react, but the big Obama gamble may wind up making us all a bit less cynical, and I really appreciate the effort regardless of the final outcome.

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    Bill,

    Seems pretty weird that we cross posted referencing Mencken........

  • Bill Bodden (unverified)
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    People may need quite a while to retrain themselves to actually ....you know.....think rather than react, but the big Obama gamble may wind up making us all a bit less cynical, and I really appreciate the effort regardless of the final outcome.

    I have my reservations about Obama, but he is the only candidate of the three viable contenders offering some hope of elevating political discourse in this nation. I wouldn't bet my social security check on it, but I'll give him my vote.

  • Tom Civiletti (unverified)
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    Can someone come up with an idea dumber than a moratorium on gas tax? Unfortunately, this will appeal to many voters. American Idol rots the brain.

    By the way, the voters do deserve better, but Kucinich and Edwards have dropped out.

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    There's not a lot of debate about this being horrible policy. But the politics of it for Clinton aren't as clear cut as her handlers assume either: Clinton gets into trouble when she underestimates voters and supports policies that she knows in her gut are wrong.

    This is a bad move for Clinton. At best it's winning the battle and losing the war.

  • Harry Kershner (unverified)
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    re: "By the way, the voters do deserve better, but Kucinich and Edwards have dropped out."

    Supporting Clinton or Obama is going to be difficult for progressives. Remember that the primary season is when Democrat candidates traditionally pander to the "left". One can only imagine how far to the right either one will go once the "debate" with McCain begins. The horror.

    Nader has not dropped out.

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    Although nothing will change my mind at this point after the unconscionable, irresponsible "obliterate" Iran threats, which make her irrevocable unfit to be president, it is too bad that Clinton has chosen to do this.

    Katy, I actually think the argument about Obama and energy interests has been one of the stronger points against him. It's not just the energy bill or the donations from oil company execs (though Hillary has her share too); it's also his relationship to the coal industry, partly a function of representing Illinois I expect, & related refusal to look at a carbon tax.

    By taking up this useless measure, which goes against her overall energy approach, Hillary has actually weakened one of her stronger issues. A pity. Likewise she has passed up the opportunity to make a common cause with Obama at one level even as they distinguish themselves within a shared outlook. She has also heightened the impression that she may be someone who offers voters things that superficially sound good but actually don't help them much, as Bill Clinton so often did.

  • Bill Bodden (unverified)
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    Can someone come up with an idea dumber than a moratorium on gas tax?

    How about voting for Hillary or McCain?

    By the way, the voters do deserve better, but Kucinich and Edwards have dropped out.

    Some voters deserve better, but the majority will get what they deserve. Feingold and Kucinich were substantial people, but the majority of people claiming to be progressives and democrats (note the small "d" is not a typo) wrote them off without giving them a chance and opted for corporate Democrats - mainly Hillary and Obama. Feingold was the only senator to vote against the horrid Patriot Act when the other 99 voted "Yea" without having read anything more than the title. Kucinich has a better record having the guts to stand up to the Likud/Kadima lobby and opposed the war crimes committed by the IDF in Southern Lebanon in 2006 when Feingold came up short. At least Democrats had enough sense to reject Joe Biden.

  • Tom Civiletti (unverified)
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    Joe Biden is an inter sting character: very bright, very informed, very articulate. I would want him as POTUS if I were one of the masters of the empire.

  • Tom Civiletti (unverified)
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    that's "interesting character"

  • Bill Bodden (unverified)
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    Joe Biden is an interesting character: very bright, very informed, very articulate.

    Unfortunately, he is also capable of being dumber than any senator has a right to be. I wrote him off after a Sunday talk show when there was a lot of frustration with the way things were going in Iraq and he said that what the president needed to do was to talk to the American people and explain what was going on. This after Bush and his administration had been on a mendacious bender talking nothing but BS about Iraq. And, Biden also voted for the war - clearly one of his dumbest moments.

  • Tom Civiletti (unverified)
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    Bill,

    I think from the viewpoint of the empire, the war was not dumb, even if it was immoral and illegal. The occupation, as administered by the Shrubbery, has definitely been dumb. I'm guessing that Biden, along with Clinton and many other Democrats thought that Cheney and Rumsfeld knew enough about Iraq and imperialism to pull off the caper. He was wrong about that.

  • Bill Bodden (unverified)
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    I think from the viewpoint of the empire, the war was not dumb, even if it was immoral and illegal.

    From the viewpoint of anyone caring about this nation, this war on Iraq is probably the dumbest misadventure and crime against humanity ever committed by the United States.

    I'm guessing that Biden, along with Clinton and many other Democrats thought that Cheney and Rumsfeld knew enough about Iraq and imperialism to pull off the caper.

    When it came to voting for the war, there were many commentators on the scene who probably had forgotten more about Iraq and the Middle East than Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Bush and any senator ever knew and they were opposed to the war. If they had just paid a little attention to the likes of Robert Fisk and Hans Blix they would have questioned anything that came out of the mouths of the people in the Bush Administration. And, if they had known the contents of the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Conventions and the United States Constitution, as they should have known them, then the only honorable, legal and moral decision was to oppose the war (caper?). Consequently, as bright and as knowledgeable as Biden and others may be, their votes also showed them capable of moral bankruptcy and/or lacking in moral courage. Just like those brilliant graduates of the University of Chicago - Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and fellow alumni.

  • Tom Civiletti (unverified)
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    Bill,

    I have the same view on Iraq as you do. I was railing against the trumped up excuses for war on cable access TV for nine months before the invasion. But the folks who run things in this country don't care much about the interests of the rest of us, or about international law, and they care even less about the people of Iraq. If the ruling class had been against invading Iraq, the invasion would never had happened. They turned against the Shrubbery only after it was clear that the occupation was a disastrous failure.

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    Sadly, the opposition of economists usually doesn't care much weight in politics. Hopefully more news stories will play the facts (little if any savings, loss of billions for transportation) loudly, and good public policy will result.

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    Jack Roberts wrote: "I'm a Republican and a McCain supporter, but I think the gas holiday both he and Hillary are proposing falls under the "How Stupid Do They Think We Are?" category of political pandering."

    It's very clear that they think we are all extremely stupid. The efrontery of their approach is breathtaking -- even shocking. Neither McCain (Jack: How could you?) nor Clinton deserve a vote from those of us who now know
    their opinion of us.

  • Jacob (unverified)
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    You Know, People everywhere deserve better. At lease Clinton is TRYING and came up with SOMETHING for right now. I don't understand the criticism of Clinton's proposed Gas Tax Break. It may not supply savings for a LONG TIME, but what is wrong with a little savings now while we wait for a bigger better Gas Tax Plan later??

  • Meryl (unverified)
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    Jacob, What's wrong with a little break on gas taxes is that, by the time the refineries take their cut we will see a lot less than the $.18 per gallon, if anything. Additionally, any savings will entice Americans to increase driving, which means more demand and higher production, which will result in higher prices, which means that we may not experience a savings at all, while roads and bridges (some of them scary and unsafe) will experience a large drop in funding that will have ramifications for the future. At the same time, it will enable us to "forget" for a summer that oil supply is dwindling, that biofuel production has become a disaster to the environment and the world's food supply, and we really have not found any viable alternatives for the mobility that our society is built upon. I'd rather see Hillary employ a team of the world's auto makers and the world's best scientists to come up with a safe alternative fuel source for cars. Or bring back the electric car. Or pose huge tax breaks for hybrids (which the federal govt has all but repealed). The gas tax holiday is just dumb policy. However, it's probably a moot point, since it's not going to happen this summer under Bush, or probably ever. It's just political posturing and Obama's refusing to play. Good for him. He's got my vote.

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    Once again, Charlie, Obama is the candidate who shifts positions like a chameleon and says anything to win.

    Obama is wrong about the gas tax

    According to CBS news (quoted via the above Salon article), Obama voted for a gas tax holiday in Illinois three times as a state senator and even joked that he wanted signs on gas pumps giving him credit for lowering people's gas prices.

    The more I find out about Obama, the more of a liar he appears. He has been attacking Hillary on "trust" for over a year and yet I don't see a single concrete example of Hillary promoting (or watering-down) legislative action based on special interests (like Obama did with Exelon and the Tritium leak bill, or the 2005 energy bill, etc.). And here again is Obama attacking an opponent hypocritically for a position he once vocally supported. Kerry was branded a flip-flopper for one change of position; Obama has dozens switcharoos under his belt now.

    Shame on Obama for his hypocrisy on this issue and so many others. Hillary is the fighter and the champion we need. And even on the gas tax holiday, Hillary showed more competence than Obama - she supports hers with a windfall profits tax, while Obama DID NOT PAY FOR HIS - showing he is the classic spending liberal and not fiscally responsible.

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    Also, as the article I linked to points out (please check it out), Obama's claim that the Illinois gas tax holiday was a failure is false - 60% of the break was passed on to the consumer and it did not increase demand appreciably.

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    Gas taxes? Seriously, the presidential campaign has come down to this?

    I could give a shit either way.

    Can we get back to talking about Iraq, Iran, universal health care, trade policy, jobs policy, education investment, climate change...

    Jesus, like a few bucks mid-summer is going to make any kind of difference to anyone.

    Fine, Hillary, you get your gas tax holiday. So what? What else you got?

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    Kari, you already know she has the better health care plan, and the personal political will to push it through and leave that legacy. And Hillary's better on the environment, providing initiatives for a major green energy initiative (which does -not- include rebuilding Trojan or any similar nuclear facility until the serious issues are resolved - issues which Exelon/Axelrol/Obama want us to ignore).

    Obama has not gone to the mat on a single tough legislative issue in his career - he is a man made by others both in Illinois and at the national level. His Harry-and-Louise routine on health care mandates - which Elizabeth Edwards righly blasts Obama about - is utterly inexcusable.

    <h2>It was your editor who made hay of this issue here, I'm just replying. Oh, but I forgot, this is just a site for political junkies and people who have already made up their minds - it isn't actually relevant to working Democrats, right?</h2>

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