Clinton Wrong on Gas Tax Too
I must disagree with Robert McCain Stacy who writes, “At least for once in her life, Hillary’s on the right side of a tax issue.” Clinton isn’t right on pushing a summer gas tax holiday. Like I wrote previously I love tax cuts most of the time. But I’m not a gas tax holiday fan. Those taxes go to the highway fund. It’s partly a user fee on those who use the roads. Both Clinton and Sen. McCain know that hole has to be filled. McCain would take funds from the general fund meaning he’d rely on income and corporate income taxes to pay for the roads. Clinton takes Sen. Obama’s bad idea and wants to stick it to the oil companies with a windfall tax.
Speaking of bad ideas Matthew Yglesias runs with raising the gas tax. Only he’d rebate half of it taxpayers. Let’s have governement take money out of taxpayers’ pockets just so the government can return half of it back to them. Talk about circular logic.
What would the extra money go to? Public transportation. For some reason liberals have so much faith in government effectively running things. They must not have the same problem I have of dealing with posted bus schedules that aren’t followed.
At least with oil companies and private companies they have profit and loss statements to keep score and see if they’re using scare resources efficiently. No profit in government means less incentive to be efficient.
There’s one other point I have to make. Yglesias writes, “in principle there’s no reason why hugely profitable oil companies couldn’t turn themselves into hugely profitably energy companies of another sort.” That’s talk from someone who fails to account for transition and transaction costs With all the interests and incentives tied up in companies like BP and ExxonMobil it might be easier and less costly for them to go under and be replaced by a new generation of energy companies. Few companies are like GE who transformed from an electricity-generator maker to a conglomerate that makes a sizable chunk of its profit from global lending.
Let’s see if Yglesias’ employer The Atlantic can transform itself into a competitor to Tiger Beat. “In principle” it could be done.
She’s in the Senate, if she thinks it’s such a good idea she should write a bill and try to get it passed. That’s how it works. People in congress propose bills and if enough people in congress like them then congress passes them. Then if the president likes them he signs them and they become laws. If the president vetos the bill and congress REALLY likes the idea they can become a law anyways.
Until HRC gets off her butt and writes the bill all of this is the most flagrant pandering imaginable.
ditto for McCain.
The market will sort this out.