Thursday, April 27, 2006

Gassy Commentary

With gas prices stuck at more than $3 a gallon (I can hear my international readers laughing, "Welcome to MY world!"), the Associated Press put out a variation on the annual Memorial Day high gas prices article, Congress Struggles to Act on Gas Prices. Two bits caught my attention:

Menendez [Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.] proposed a 60-day suspension of the 18.4-cent federal tax on gasoline and 24-cent-a-gallon diesel tax. Revenue lost to the government, as much as $6 billion, would be made up by removing some oil-company tax breaks, he said

Gas hits $3 a gallon, and that's when they consider having the oil companies pay the taxes on gas. I hope there is a dang good explanation why this wasn't considered sooner.

Presumably, oil companies also could pass an additional tax burden onto consumers.

Well, no crap. Do these Senators actually think for one minute that increasing the taxes the oil companies pay is going to help the situation? I barely made it through the required one semester of high school economics and I can tell you that there is no way they'll let higher taxes eat into their record profits. Squeezing more money out of the oil companies may make people feel good, until the oil companies squeeze that and more out of us.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nationalize the oil companies. --Emp. Peng.

Anonymous said...

Remove the taxes on fuel temporarily and the oil company tax breaks. If Brasil could 100% away from petroleum for fuel using locally grown sugar: why not the US? We gave them the technology so why not use it here: we have to support the American Petroleum Institute. We can do it promptly with diesel as are the Europeans including with this powering European Hybrid cars.
AJH