gas tax relief is d for dumb…

I cannot believe the talk on I’m hearing on this Gas Tax relief in the summer months idea being proposed by Senator Clinton and Senator McCain… As I was driving around today, I switched off my normal tunes to listen to a little NPR, and found a news bit about this proposal that 2/3rds of the candidates are pontificating about. My first response is, “Seriously, can you even do anything about this tax? Or are you just trying to muster some support from those who want to save pennies to the gallon?”

Come on, lifting the 18% federal tax on gas… what does that do? It makes no sense in long-term economics, and does nothing to alleviate the problems of our reliance on foreign oil (or oil in general). Let look at the actual savings: Gas prices have risen more than $2 in the last 5 years… I remember filling up my freshman year at the University of Tulsa for a staggering 79 cents a gallon… which was 15 cents below the national average. See graph below for a visual.

So we take today’s average gas price of $3.617 a gallon times 82% (which is 100% - 18%)… and we get $2.967 a gallon a savings of 65 cents… which seems like a real good deal, it was price of gasoline in September of 2007, a mere 7 months ago… but with rising fuel costs and only a short-term break in prices… does this really help us in the long run, or is it again a band-aid on a bullet wound? Thank you Barack Obama for your audacity to see through the “games” of Washington politics and strive for a change in how we attack the issues and not be distracted by the peripheral mudslinging of your counterparts. Here is what Senator Obama had to say: