Senator McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, claims to not understand the economy. This fact became glaringly clear this week when he proposed temporarily lifting the gas tax to relieve sky-rocking gas prices. It’s a clever sound byte, but not only won’t it reduce the price of gasoline, it will bankrupt the trust fund and put 300,000 people of out work. That’s not very clever.

We have not raised the gas tax since 1993 when gas cost just $1.09 a gallon. Today a gallon of gas costs $3.39. The tax was just a mere 18.3 cents per gallon in 1993 and it is still 18.3 cents per a gallon today.

Any good solution to a problem has to actually address the real problem. So if the gas tax didn’t cause the historical run-up in gas prices, then what did? Everyone knows it’s a combination of massive oil company profits, speculation by Wall Street, and the OPEC oil barons.

But McCain is not going to take on corporate America and the oil barons. The oil industry is price gouging consumers and making record profits but McCain has no plans to work with them to bring down gas prices. OPEC is engaging in collusion to restrict supply to drive up prices and violating international trade law but McCain has not spoken once of taking them on. Speculators on Wall Steet are driving up the price of gas so they can make money and McCain stands idly by.

The miniscule relief offered by senator McCain is unlikely to materialize. When states have tried to waive their gas taxes in the past, the oil industry responded by simply keeping the price level and pocketing the difference. No wonder they continue to show record profits. Senator McCain’s proposal would simply transfer dedicated road improvement funding to the pockets of oil barons.

Senator McCain’s proposal has a tremendous cost to it. The gas tax pays for our already aging infrastructure system and lifting the tax, even for the temporary period between Memorial Day and Labor Day, would cost over 300 thousand jobs and millions of dollars to our already deteriorating transportation infrastructure, which is essential to our economy. Without the needed investment we will experience more tragedies such as the Minnesota bridge collapse, traffic congestion will grow and transportation bottlenecks will cripple our economy.

John McCain is wrong - plain and simple. Lifting the tax would do little to help those feeling the crunch at the pump, be disastrous for our already imperiled transportation infrastructure system, and it does not address the real culprits behind record oil prices-the oil industry, OPEC and Wall Street.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 7:00 am and is filed under Politics, Economy/Budget, Energy/Environment .