Forget Gas Tax Holiday Hoax

That idea, pitched by McCain and Hillary, was debunked by economists and Obama and now there's talk of raising the tax for fixing roads and such.

MSNBC: Just three years ago, that trust fund enjoyed a surplus of $10 billion. Even without a tax freeze, the fund is projected to finish 2009 with a deficit of $3 billion. That that could grow as Americans drive less and buy less gas because of higher pump prices.

The consequence is that only about $27 billion in federal money will be available next year to states and local governments for new infrastructure investment even though the current highway act calls for spending $41 billion a year. For many, the solution is to raise rather than suspend or cut federal fuel taxes, which haven't changed since 1993.

The Transportation Construction Coalition, a group of industry companies and unions, said that if Congress does not do something about the shortfall, states will lose about one-third of their road and bridge money in the budget year starting Oct. 1. That would put 485,000 more jobs at risk.

Gas Tax Hoax

hillary still can't admit to the foolishness of the idea.
mccain has alas admitted it's just a little break.
hillary's made an ad out of it and is counting on most people being ignorant. sad thing is, it seems to be working for her. some americans are really easy to fool, especially the ones with their woman glasses on. this is the stuff we're going to get if hillary steals the election.
economists have come out against it and a new holiday gas tax calculator allows you to figure your "savings," if the oil companies don't raise the prices.

No Way, No How Can Hillary Win

McCain: Nice Little Break for Americans

he's talking about the mccain-hillary gas tax holiday, which has been criticized by many economists. one, it could actually drive up prices even more, two it's part of hillary's "gift basket" politics, three, it makes no sense whatsoever.

hillary is running around posing for cameras at indiana gas stations doing her part to promote the mccain-hillary holiday. her supporters cheer. come on, ladies. it's sad so many women are playing into this first woman president thing at the cost electing the worst candidate. hillary's even running an ad based on the holiday. i guess she's counting on the stupid people vote.

on this issue alone, obama proves once again that he can stand alone and make the right decision, just like his opposition to the iraq war. the clear difference between obama and hillary is that she's lying to her supporters to get them to vote for her. she'll say anything. obama hasn't stooped.

it's too bad that many americans are blind to hillary's shenanigans. do they just not care about the methods she uses to win? but it's clear that this nation needs obama as president. he will be good for the country in so many ways. his grasp of economics is way underestimated. all of his naysayers will be proven wrong.

more opposition to the mccain-hillary holiday:

In response to Senator Clinton and Senator McCain's recent calls for a gas tax "holiday," former Clinton Energy Secretary Federico Peña released the following statement today:

Today we're seeing another example of Washington politics at its worst. Senator Clinton is running TV ads and launching repeated attacks on Barack Obama for not supporting the gas tax holiday she's supporting, but today her own aides told the Washington Post that they know that this is a questionable plan and that they are using it to make it appear they're against big oil. The Clinton gas tax gimmick does little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and will actually increase oil prices. It is the kind of pandering that insults people's intelligence. With energy prices skyrocketing, we're looking for real solutions—not political posturing to get elected.

Gas Tax Holiday Folly
No Way, No How Can Hillary Win

Friedman: Gas Tax Holiday Folly

Another expert outs the Clinton-McCain gas tax holiday for what it is. stupid. Come on people, you must see Hillary for who she is. A panderer and an old-time politician. Besides, a vote for Hillary is a vote for Bill. You're not getting the first woman president. Let's wait for the real thing, a woman who gets into office on her own merits.

nyt: It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Are you sitting down?

Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again — which often happens — investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That’s how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.

No Way, No How Can Hillary Win

Most Oppose the Gas Tax Holiday

hillary has gone and made an ad about her "holiday" (mccain's too!) and during her campaign, her supporters cheered the idea, yay! we save $25 in the summer! obama has debunked the holiday as a gimmick.

and only one person supports it (a clinton supporter) and 8 (a mix of clinton and obama supporters and economists) say it's a stupid idea.
here's what nyt paul krugman (hillary supporter) said:

Why doesn't cutting the gas tax this summer make sense? It's Econ 101 tax incidence theory: if the supply of a good is more or less unresponsive to the price, the price to consumers will always rise until the quantity demanded falls to match the quantity supplied. Cut taxes, and all that happens is that the pretax price rises by the same amount. The McCain gas tax plan is a giveaway to oil companies, disguised as a gift to consumers.

Is the supply of gasoline really fixed? For this coming summer, it is. Refineries normally run flat out in the summer, the season of peak driving. Any elasticity in the supply comes earlier in the year, when refiners decide how much to put in inventories. The McCain/Clinton gas tax proposal comes too late for that. So it's Econ 101: the tax cut really goes to the oil companies.

The Clinton twist is that she proposes paying for the revenue loss with an excess profits tax on oil companies. In one pocket, out the other. So it's pointless, not evil. But it is pointless, and disappointing. read the rest

end of story. hillary is pandering yet again.
No Way, No How Can Hillary Win

Gas Tax Holiday Political Gimmick

obama is the only one making sense on this "holiday," separating himself from the panderers.

oregonian: Sen. John McCain's idea to give Americans a summer holiday from federal gas taxes is about as weighty as a Barbie Dream Car, yet he can't stop driving it into the ground.

Neither can Sen. Hillary Clinton. The two presidential contenders can't resist the chance to pander to voters and, as a bonus, paint Sen. Barack Obama as an elitist. By doing so, they're missing an opportunity to show leadership on some major long-term challenges -- such as updating the nation's crowded roads and aging bridges.

In a speech on April 15, McCain proposed that the federal government suspend the 18.4-cent-per-gallon gas tax and the 24.4-cent-per-gallon diesel tax between Memorial Day and Labor Day. He painted the idea as tax relief for ordinary Americans and as a stimulus for the ailing economy.


McCain's idea is problematic on several levels. First, it would begin and end several months before the next president takes office, so it's more of a thought balloon than a plan. Second, the tax relief would save the typical American family only about $40 per car, while also siphoning $10 billion from the cash-strapped federal highway fund.

What's more, leading economists say the tax break would do little to lower the prices at the pump. More likely, the slightly lower prices would lead to higher demand, which would push the prices back up, allowing oil companies to make more money while federal tax coffers go hungry.

This is an election-year sop, not a plan for the future. Yet the millionaire senator and presumptive Republican nominee has stuck with it, using it as shorthand to call Obama -- who opposes the tax holiday -- out of touch with ordinary Americans.

"Obviously," McCain said Sunday while campaigning in Florida, " Senator Obama does not understand that this would be a nice thing for Americans."

Clinton piled on as well.

"My opponent Senator Obama opposes giving consumers a break on the gas tax at the federal level," she told supporters in North Carolina on Monday. "I support it. I understand the American people need some relief."

We agree with Obama on this issue. He calls it a short-term fix that benefits oil companies rather than consumers, and says it creates the illusion of leadership without actual change. But we also expect more from McCain, an independent thinker who rarely resorts to such political gimmicks. more

Obama Press Conference on Wright

at obama's town hall in north carolina, he said he would be holding a press conference on wright today. he said that in response to a woman who said she was "sick to death" of the soundbytes of jeremiah wright. she encouraged everyone to watch the PBS interview if they had any concerns.

obama said that wright is diverting the attention from the real problems and he had planned to address the media today. it's good to hear that people are tuning out.

a man from liberia said that africans are praying for obama to become president and asked what this would mean to african children. imagine.

on the gas tax holiday, he reiterated that it would only save people only $25 to $30, and take away from the money that goes on to fix the roads. the solution is long-term, he said. "i want to solve the problem, not just patch things up to get through an election."

a woman asked about the demographics: why he wasn't attracting the white working class and older women. obama said that some of the reporting is skewed. he's won much of those demographics in other states.

he has not won them in ohio and pennsylvania. he said people there know hillary and feel loyal to her.

i'll post video when it's available.

McCain and Hillary Go on Gas Tax Holiday Together

mccain's silly gas tax holiday is hillary's too:

nyt: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season. But Senator Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic rival, spoke out firmly against the proposal, saying it would save consumers little and do nothing to curtail oil consumption and imports.

While Mr. Obama’s view is shared by environmentalists and many independent energy analysts, his position allowed Mrs. Clinton to draw a contrast with her opponent in appealing to the hard-hit middle-class families and older Americans who have proven to be the bedrock of her support. She has accused Mr. Obama of being out of touch with ordinary Americans who are struggling to meet their mortgages and gas up their cars and trucks.

Obama Raps McCain's Silly Gas Tax Holiday

we'd only save $25 to $30 with mccain's holiday and it would take away from the funds that fix the roads.

McCain Makes Me Chuckle

mccain calling obama insensitive to poor people is like china's leaders calling the dalai lama the devil.

come on mccain, you gotta come up with something better than that. most of us realize that obama has worked on behalf of the poor for many years.

this quote from mccain is absurd.

msnbc: "I noticed again today that Sen. Obama repeated his opposition to giving low-income Americans a tax break, a little bit of relief so they can travel a little further and a little longer, and maybe have a little bit of money left over to enjoy some other things in their lives," McCain said. "Obviously Sen. Obama does not understand that this would be a nice thing for Americans, and the special interests should not be dictating this policy."

No Way, No How Will McCain Win

mccain is running around with the poor people making a media play. but he's not fooling anyone. i don't recall hearing mccain's voice of outrage against the treatment of katrina victims when the event happened, so when he passionately says that the ineptitude and injustice that was katrina will never happen again, that's nice to say, but where were you when it mattered?

mccain is appearing more like a bumble. as soon as he's up against obama, he's going down quickly. voters are getting smart. they're getting smart about politicians and the media.

mccain is weak on the economy. his gas tax holiday is hokey. extending bush's tax cuts for wealthy americans shows he's out of step with america. anything that's related to george bush is not going to fly. bush has simply been the worst president in recent history, and he's completely oblivious to that fact, which makes us more revolted.

mccain's only perceived strength, if you want to call it that, is national security, but i think more americans are becoming aware that we've been snowed on the iraq war. we know that being secure is about more than running around country to country, picking a fight. it's about diplomacy.

the republicans think that war is a given, that we will always be in iraq. the bottom line is that iraq has always been about oil and not a whole lot more.

john mccain can laugh about arugula and whole foods now (since i don't have health insurance, mccain, that's the way i stay healthy), but he's going to be up against a strong candidate, barack obama, a public fed up with bush, and a more politically savvy and engaged public.

frank rich at the nyt says mccain's turn is coming:

Mr. McCain is not only burdened with the most despised president in his own 71-year lifetime, but he’s getting none of the seasoning that he, no less than the Democrats, needs to compete in the fall. Age is as much an issue as race and gender in this campaign. Mr. McCain will have to prove not merely that he can keep to the physical rigors of his schedule and fend off investigations of his ties to lobbyists and developers. He also must show he can think and speak fluently about the domestic issues that are gripping the country. Picture him debating either Democrat about health care, the mortgage crisis, stagnant middle-class wages, rice rationing at Costco. It’s not pretty.

Last week found Mr. McCain visiting economically stricken and “forgotten” communities (forgotten by Republicans, that is) in what his campaign bills as the “It’s Time for Action Tour.” It kicked off in Selma, Ala., a predominantly black town where he confirmed his maverick image by drawing an almost exclusively white audience.

The “action” the candidate outlined in the text of his speeches may strike many voters as running the gamut from inaction to inertia. Mr. McCain vowed that he would not “roll out a long list of policy initiatives.” (He can’t, given his long list of tax cuts.) He said he would not bring back lost jobs, lost wages or lost houses. But, as The Birmingham News reported, this stand against government bailouts for struggling Americans didn’t prevent his campaign from helping itself to free labor underwritten by taxpayers: inmates from a local jail were recruited to set up tables and chairs for a private fund-raiser.

The Democrats’ unending brawl may be supplying prime time with a goodly share of melodrama right now, but there will be laughter aplenty once the Republican campaign that’s not ready for prime time emerges from the wings.

Pennsylvania From McCain's Perspective

this is from mccain's camp:

To: Interested Parties
From: Rick Davis
Date: April 23, 2008
Re: Pennsylvania Democratic Primary Results

The race for the Democratic Nomination will continue.
Hillary Clinton's victory in Pennsylvania last night has extended the primary to the next round of contests (Indiana and North Carolina on May 6) and has maintained the competitive nature of the race.
With her 10-point victory, we should expect her poll numbers and resources to increase in the coming days. Primary wins, especially in the 2008 election cycle, have had a direct impact on the national polling numbers for the candidates and when national polling numbers increase, so do campaign donations.

Since last night, the Clinton campaign reportedly raised $10 million dollars online - enough to make a significant dent in upcoming media buys in North Carolina and Indiana. Barack Obama continues to surpass fundraising expectations and will most likely continue to do so. We need help during this period of democratic turmoil so we can build are resources and be ready to fight when the race begins.
Pennsylvania exit polls tell an interesting story that has implications for November.
Even though Hillary Clinton won this primary, Barack Obama is seen as the front runner among Pennsylvania Democrats and is perceived to be the candidate most likely to win the Democratic Party's nomination.

Fifty-five percent of Pennsylvania voters say they believe Barack Obama will be the nominee in November. And, one-fifth of Clinton's Pennsylvania supporters believe he will be the nominee in November. So, the victory for Clinton is seen as a bump in the road for Obama, even by some of her true believers.

Exit polls reveal why this poses significant problems for Obama if he becomes the nominee. The most important problem: Clinton voters don't automatically become Obama voters after he becomes the nominee. In fact, Obama leaves large portions of Clinton's coalition on the table in November.

Obama only wins 72% of the Democratic vote in a general election match up among those surveyed last night. Clinton shows her broad coalitional strength and wins 81% in a general election match up against John McCain. A full quarter of the Democrats in Pennsylvania are not willing to cast their ballot for Obama against McCain (15% say they vote McCain and 10% say they stay home), however, Clinton loses only 17% of Democrats (10% for McCain and 7% would not vote). This gap of 8-points would be significant in a general election match up. President Bush lost Pennsylvania by 2-points in 2004, when 41% of the electorate were Democrats. That 8-point gap among Democrats is enough to swing the state the other way (8% of 41% is 2.8-points, turning Pennsylvania red). This dynamic is clearly visible in publicly released surveys; an average of April polls show McCain trailing Obama by an average of 3-points (3 surveys in April) and trailing Clinton by 8-points.

The cracks in Obama's Democratic coalition in Pennsylvania mirror what we saw in Ohio, and those cracks could have implications in November.
Hillary Clinton cleaned up with Union households - like she did in Ohio.
In Pennsylvania, Clinton won 59% of Union members (Obama 41%). Obama won these voters by significant margins in Wisconsin (+9), but has lost his hold on their vote in both Ohio (Clinton 55% - 43%) and now Pennsylvania.

Clinton did better than Obama with lower income voters.
Our targeting and analysis of the 2008 political landscape puts voters who are on the lower economic brackets at the heart of either party's winning coalition. Hillary won at every income level below $150,000, and Obama only won with the wealthiest Pennsylvania voters. Obama's media foibles contributed to his inability to connect to voters who are suffering the real impact of this challenging economic environment.

This is also apparent in the number of voters who feel Clinton is more in touch with their views. Fifty-six percent of Pennsylvania Democrats say Clinton cares about people like them - again a significant switch from earlier contests. Wisconsin exit polls shows Obama had a 12-point advantage on that measure. By the time Ohio held their primary, Clinton had switched the dynamic and led by 12-points.

Clinton won Catholic voters.
In Wisconsin, Clinton split the Catholic vote 50%-50% with Obama. Again, she changed the dynamic in Ohio and won Catholics by 27-points (63% - 36%). In Pennsylvania, she increased her margins and won by 38-points (69% - 31%). The strength of this coalition bolsters her argument that Obama would have had problems competing in Michigan and will not be able to carry key Midwestern states in November.

Clinton won Jewish voters.
In Pennsylvania, the first state where both candidates competed for a significant block of Jewish voters, Clinton won by 15-points (57% - 43%). Again, the data suggests Jewish voters, a key Democratic coalition, pose a potential problem for Obama.

Clinton increased her margins in suburban and rural areas - without losing ground in urban areas. Clinton won Pennsylvania suburbs by a 12-point margin and won rural areas by 22-points. And Clinton lost in urban areas by 14-points. This is similar to her Ohio performance. But, it shows an increase in her performance in urban areas from earlier contests (in Wisconsin she lost urban areas by 21-points). Clinton has figured out how to increase her margins among suburban and rural voters and cut into Obama's base of urban voters.
What does that mean for John McCain?

Ultimately most pundits contend that Hillary Clinton still has more than an uphill battle to become the nominee. So, what does this victory mean for John McCain?

While the Democratic nomination continues to unfold, our campaign is actively engaged in listening to voters' concerns and sharing John McCain's message with them. Senator McCain has an active schedule in the coming weeks. Last week, he gave a major economic address where he addressed short term concerns like enacting a summer gas tax holiday, he proposed a new "HOME Plan" to help those who are hurt by the housing crisis and he is proposing a student loan continuity plan to make sure America's college students aren't hurt from the credit crunch. In addition, Senator McCain has spent this week travelling to places many in our nation have forgotten and where our citizens have felt left behind but where hope, innovation and local solutions are helping to lift these communities up. And, next week, Senator McCain will visit various health care facilities and unveil his plans and solutions to help Americans improve access and affordability to good health care. In addition, the campaign is building our organization and resources for the campaign in the fall.