[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 80 (Tuesday, June 4, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5776-S5777]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE SILLY SEASON

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I felt like cheering as I read Tom 
Friedman's column in the New York Times on the gasoline tax, which I 
ask to be printed in the Record after my remarks.
  Frankly, no tax cut makes any sense when we are still running a huge 
deficit. Tax cuts are pandering at their worst.
  But of all the tax cuts the one that makes the least sense is the 
4.3-cent-a-gallon cut in the gas tax.
  Even our neighbors in Canada, who have much greater distances to 
cover with a sparser population, have a gasoline tax roughly double our 
gasoline tax.
  No country outside Saudi Arabia has a gas tax lower than ours.
  We illustrate over and over again the need for doing what Thomas 
Jefferson first suggested--having a constitutional amendment to 
restrict Government borrowing.
  For most of the first two centuries of our country's existence that 
was not a huge problem, but we are so motivated by polls and gimmicks 
that we are doing a great disservice to our country.
  If President Clinton had stood up and said this is wrong, he would 
have picked up support both in conservative circles as well as 
generally.
  It is interesting that after we had passed the 4.3-cent-a-gallon tax 
increase, I did not have a single person among the 12 million people in 
Illinois object to that tax increase.
  I talked to a western Senator where you might expect greater 
sensitivity, and he told me he had the same experience.
  The article follows:

                       [From the New York Times]

                            The Silly Season

                        (By Thomas L. Friedman)

       Washington.--I have a confession to make: Even before the 
     old Bob Dole became the new Bob Dole, our family station 
     wagon wasn't exactly plastered with his bumper stickers. But 
     last week I returned from an overseas trip to find that Mr. 
     Dole was proposing to repeal the 4.3-cent-a-gallon gasoline 
     tax, and I've changed my mind about the old guy. Yes, sir, 
     scrapping the gasoline tax. That's the sort of leadership 
     America needs; that's the sort of spirit of sacrifice the 
     country's been missing: a President who's ready to sacrifice 
     the budget, to sacrifice the environment, to sacrifice energy 
     conservation, to sacrifice oil reserves in order to save the 
     American people 4.3 cents a gallon. And when Mr. Dole's 
     sidekick Dick Armey, the House majority leader, suggested 
     that we consider cutting the education budget to make up for 
     the lost gas-tax revenue, well, then and there I knew I was a 
     Dole man. I mean, cutting education to save Americans a few 
     pennies a gallon at a time when their gas is already the 
     cheapest in the world--that's the kind of thinking that will 
     keep us the world's most competitive nation in the 21st 
     century. I sure hope the Japanese don't get that idea.
       Are we out of our minds? Raising the gas tax has been one 
     of the few smart things we've done in recent years. It 
     promotes energy conservation, it helps protect the air, it 
     encourages development of alternative energies, it promotes 
     national security by reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil 
     supplies--and it reduces the budget deficit. That 4.3-cent-a-
     gallon tax raises $5 billion a year. It is one of the reasons 
     the deficit has been cut in half since 1993.
       Any proposal to repeal the gas tax should be hooted out of 
     Congress with scorn. Unfortunately, that's not what President 
     Clinton did. Instead he's trying to trade his support for 
     this idiotic gas-tax repeal for a Republican endorsement of 
     his proposal to raise the minimum wage--the worst sort of 
     election-year poker. Mr. Clinton is saying to Mr. Dole: ``I 
     see your foolishness and I raise you one.''
       It is hard to believe that the Dole proposal for repeal of 
     the gas tax is effective even as political pandering. How 
     many people are really going to change their votes from 
     Clinton to Dole over 4.3 cents a gallon? Moreover, how can 
     Republicans argue that a balanced budget and deficit 
     reduction are the two most urgent priorities in American 
     politics and then, when gas prices go up a bit due to 
     seasonal factors, simply discard the gas tax without regard 
     for the long-term budget implications? ``It only makes sense 
     politically if it is part of a broader Dole strategy for 
     lowering taxes,'' says Bill Kristol, editor of the 
     conservative Weekly Standard. And then for Mr. Armey to 
     even hint that we might pay for this giveaway by cutting 
     education--that takes your breath away. For a cheap 
     political high with the shelf life of a dead fish, a House 
     Republican leader is ready to cut $5 billion a year from 
     education? How could such a thought even cross Mr. Armey's 
     mind? Forget about what a Dole Presidency would be like; 
     if this keeps up I'm not sure we can afford a Dole 
     candidacy.
       The truth is we shouldn't be lowering our gas taxes. We 
     should be raising them. Gasoline is probably the best bargain 
     commodity in the U.S. marketplace. The latest blip aside, the 
     real price of gasoline in the U.S. has been falling for 15 
     years (and if the Iraqi oil sanctions are eased by the U.N. 
     soon, gas prices in the U.S. will likely resume that downward 
     trend). In France and Italy, gas goes for $4.50 a gallon; in 
     Japan it costs $3.75. Most of the difference between their 
     prices and ours is taxes that those Governments use to 
     finance public services. We could put a 50-cent-a-gallon tax 
     on U.S. gasoline, get rid of the deficit and still have a 
     huge competitive edge over the Europeans and Japanese. ``This 
     is one of the easiest and most attractive ways of raising tax 
     revenue, and we're just giving it away,'' says the oil 
     economist Vahan Zanoyan, of the Petroleum Finance Company.

[[Page S5777]]

       In his speech announcing his resignation from the Senate, 
     Mr. Dole insisted that: ``My campaign for the President is 
     not merely about obtaining office. It's about fundamental 
     things, consequential things, things that are real. My 
     campaign is about telling the truth, it's about doing what is 
     right.''
       If that's true, then I can't wait for the Dole campaign to 
     begin.

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