Hillary, Barack, and the Gas Tax Holiday

I was reading posts over at Talking Points Memo about the whole Gas Tax Holiday goofiness and I had a couple of thoughts I had to get off my chest.  For anyone living under a rock, essentially the Gas Tax Holiday (GTH) is a suspension of the tax on gas for the summer months to try to save consumers some money.  To make up for the money lost from the tax, the profits of oil companies would be taxed.

Hillary is for, Barack is against.

Since stating she is for the GTH, there’s been a lot of talk in the press, with policymakers, and from economists basically saying the GTH idea is a waste of time and wouldn’t truly bring relieve to drivers for a variety of reasons.  One argument is that the oil companies would just raise the price of gas 18 cents per gallon, the amount of the tax, and make more money, b/c they know the market can sustain that price.  When asked what she thought of the fact that not a single economist thought the GTH was a good idea, Clinton basically said she didn’t care what economists think.  What the hell is that?  Would she rather have the opinion of pharmacists or clowns when dealing with economic issues.  Its really hard for me to wrap my head around that response, and the thing that bothers me the most about it is that its a very W-like response, which really scares me.

I think Barack isn’t taking full advantage of the opportunity that she’s presented him with.  He’s been hitting her pretty hard on the fact that she’s not offering a worthwhile long term solution, and she’s making the politically expedient move.  What I think he’s missing or isn’t saying is that she’s trying to promise something there’s no way she can deliver.  Even if she introduced the GTH today, a good number of legislators said they wouldn’t support it, and even if there are enough that do support it, when does Congress move fast enough on something like that to get it passed by this summer.

As much as I don’t trust her and hope she doesn’t win I have to give Clinton credit.  She doesn’t have anything to lose.  She makes a promise she probably knows she can’t keep that will likely get her votes.  She tries to get the GTH passed in Congress, but it fails and she can blame it on people like Obama for not supporting it and not caring enough about the working man.  It could backfire on her by bringing the ire of other Democrats in Congress, but given the scorched earth policy her campaign seems to have taken on at times, I’m not sure she’s not blind to everything but trying to win the nomination.