McCain/Clinton Tax Cut: Silly, Superfluous Pandering

At the Huffington Post, Sam Stein has written a post titled:

"Expert Support For Gas Tax Holiday Appears Nonexistent"

Surely, however, there must be someone out there not associated with a politician or a candidate who supported the idea of a gas tax reprieve -- especially if, as Clinton suggests, it would be paid for by an excess profits tax on oil companies.

I emailed Howard Wolfson, Clinton's spokesperson, asking him to put me in touch with an economic or environmental analyst who favored his boss' plan. He never wrote back.

So I took the task upon myself. I would call experts from all sides of the ideological aisle to get a sense of where the debate stood. In the end, every single analyst I surveyed judged the gas tax holiday proposal to be, roughly speaking, a silly, superfluous, or outright pandering idea.

Aside from this small criticism, I think the McCain/Clinton proposal is indicative of the kind of things these two can do when they put their common political interests ahead of common sense.

Technorati Tags: Gas Tax Cut, McCain/Clinton 2008, You Scratch My Back etc, Maverick and Mrs Maverick, Do Anything to Win

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