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Two bad, one less bad Thursday, May 1, 2008 By John Brummett All three presidential prospects grovel and pander on soaring gasoline prices. But two fail us more egregiously than the third. Not unexpectedly, the worst offenders are John McCain and Hillary Clinton, who, I'm now sadly inclined to believe, will provide our nose-holding alternatives in November. McCain was the first to propose suspending the federal gasoline tax over the summer. He said it would give people a break. He said we spend highway money irresponsibly anyway. First, the federal gasoline tax is but a tiny fraction of the price of gasoline. Suspending it from Memorial Day to Labor Day might net the average family $30. But, economists warn, even that savings could well be offset by rising prices from rising consumption, otherwise known as supply and demand. In other words, we might merely move the consumers' money from the government to the oil companies. Second, our nation's transportation infrastructure is crumbling. Motorists were on a Mississippi River bridge one minute and in the water the next. Giving up highway revenue is insane. While it is true, as McCain argues, that some of that highway money gets squandered to pork and politics, the solution is not to cut off our noses to spite our faces, but - imagine this - to resolve to spend the money more wisely, responsibly, efficiently and effectively. Third, the answer to our energy problem is not to give everybody a few summer dollars to drive and consume. It's to change our habits. It's to drive less. It's to carpool. It's to use mass transit. It's to go hybrid. It's not to forgive any tax, but to impose a new one, on carbon emissions, to relieve our assault on the environment and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Clinton, seeing a cynical opening to continue to impersonate a friend of the working class, chimed in to second McCain's motion for a suspension of the gasoline tax. And she promptly aired a television commercial blistering Barack Obama because he opposes the notion. But, unlike McCain, she proposes to replace the squandered highway revenue with a windfall profits tax on oil companies, meaning a tax that would kick in if the oil companies reached a certain threshold in net earnings. Well, there's this: A windfall profits tax is not likely to pass this Congress this year, meaning she takes political credit for a tax cut while pretending to be otherwise fiscally responsible by embracing a hollow counterbalancing measure. And there's this: We tried a windfall profits tax on oil companies during the Carter presidency, and all it did, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, was produce much less money than was forecast and stem the oil companies' production of domestic oil. Again, here's the answer: Consume less. Finally, there's Obama. He, too, proposed a windfall profits tax days ago, but not to pay for a gasoline tax holiday and consumption spree. He called his proposal "a windfall profits penalty," and said he would apply it to any oil selling at or more than $80 per barrel. He would invest revenue from the tax in weatherization assistance and in programs to help low- and middle-income Americans pay heating and cooling bills. At least part of his also-hollow windfall profits tax would be used to stimulate conservation and not unbridled consumption. And at least he has the guts to say that suspending the gasoline tax in the summer would amount to a "short-term gimmick" that wouldn't reap any real consumer benefit or do any real economic or societal good. No wonder he may be the odd man out. Many are saying that we in the media are wrong to spend so much time on the pronouncements of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright rather than real issues. But, if the candidates can't do any better than this on the real issues, we're probably better off confronting uncomfortable talk on race and religion. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
