redblueamerica.com

Pander pander pander. Pander. And pander.

What? Oh, sorry. I started typing what I really thought about this story from McClatchy:

Hillary Clinton Monday criticized Barack Obama for opposing the concept of suspending the gasoline tax during the peak summer driving months, a plan both she and Republican John McCain have endorsed. <!-- story_videobox.comp --> <!-- /story_videobox.comp -->

The idea to suspend the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day was first proposed by McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, as a way to ease the economic burden for consumers during the summer.

Obama doesn't support the "gas tax holiday" and has said the average motorist would not benefit significantly from such a suspension, which some estimates said the federal government would lose about $10 billion in revenue.

Obama's right. Clinton and McCain are right on the politics, but wrong on the substance.

Why is Obama right? In part because the gas tax has very little to do with how expensive gasoline will get this summer. Right now, the price is hovering around $3.50 a gallon in Kansas, with 18.4 cents going to the feds. If the price were, say, $2 a gallon, the feds would still be collecting ... 18.4 cents of that. And if the price hits $10 a gallon -- possible, but yikes! -- the feds would still collect, you guessed it, 18.4 cents per gallon. Gasoline is taxed by volume, not by price. It could be that the tax would be eliminated and consumers would never notice -- or, perhaps, notice for only a few weeks -- because the price might still race upward.

It would be nice, as a consumer to bring the cost of gasoline down. (Though from a global warming standpoint, that may be less true.) But the gasoline tax isn't going to make that big a difference, and it will deprive the government of another revenue stream at a time when spending is not slowing down.