[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 74 (Tuesday, May 6, 2008)]
[House]
[Page H3053]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   FEDERAL GAS TAX HOLIDAY A BAD IDEA

  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.
  One of the most disappointing turns in the current campaign has been 
the proposal of Senator Clinton and Senator McCain for the ``gas tax 
holiday.''
  One doesn't want to be cynical, but thinking back to Senator McCain's 
Straight Talk Express in the year 2000, it would be hard to imagine 
that he thought it was a good idea back then, that he wouldn't have 
stooped to this political trick. It wouldn't have been consistent with 
what he was saying and how he represented himself.
  As far as Senator Clinton is concerned, we don't have to guess about 
her position in 2000. We know because her opponent in 2000 when she was 
first running for the Senate, our former colleague, Rick Lazio, called 
for suspending the 18.3 cent Federal gas tax and actually repealing the 
4.3 cent per gallon surcharge that had been enacted. ``What Mrs. 
Clinton needs to do,'' he said, ``is get out of the motorcade, get out 
of fantasyland and get in contact with the issues that are affecting 
real New Yorkers, the prices at the pump.''
  It's instructive what then candidate Clinton had to say. She and her 
aides fired back immediately at Mr. Lazio for offering what they said 
was a shortsighted solution that could jeopardize money to fix 
highways. In fact, they handed out fliers that used quotes from 
Republican leaders to bolster her point that repealing the gas tax 
surcharge could be harmful. The Republicans discouraged such measures, 
the flier said, because they could diminish highway construction money.
  Senator Clinton said, in debating Mr. Lazio:
  ``We're totally reliant on the gas tax to do things like finishing I-
86 in the Southern Tier, or the fast-ferry harbor works up in 
Rochester, as well as work we need to do here in the city. So you can 
count on me to support infrastructure,'' as she explained her 
opposition. And indeed she lashed out at the plan for the outright 
repeal of the 4.3 cent gas tax, calling it ``a bad deal for New York 
and a potential bonanza for the oil companies.''
  Well, the facts that Senator Clinton argued in 2000 are still true 
today. The timing, if anything, is worse, because for the first time in 
history, the Federal highway trust fund is going into deficit, and this 
would call for an additional reduction of $9 billion to $10 billion and 
300,000 highway construction jobs. It actually is coming at a time when 
we should as a country be finding ways to invest more in 
infrastructure, not less. Virtually every independent expert 
acknowledges that as well as most people in the House and the Senate.
  And, of course, the irony as Senator Clinton herself intimated is 
that this gas tax holiday is actually a holiday for the big producers, 
refiners and importers. They're the ones who pay the tax. The tax is 
charged to them. In order for any of the savings to trickle down to the 
pockets of motorists, the oil and gas interests would have to decide 
that they're going to pass their savings on to the rest of us. As 
Senator Clinton pointed out in 2000, it's a potential bonanza for them. 
There's no indication that they're looking to share. Look at what they 
did with record profits of $10.6 billion for ExxonMobil. Did they use 
that extra money to reduce prices at the pump?
  The good news is that the American public is not buying this 
political trick. Even though they are aggravated at spiraling high gas 
prices and somebody is offering them, in a sense, free money, the 
American public sees through that. Fifty-one percent agree that it is a 
bad idea, even in the face of high gas prices. Even more tellingly, in 
the New York Times survey published yesterday, when the public was 
asked are politicians proposing this tax holiday because it's good for 
America or because it's good, they think, for the politicians, 70 
percent said Clinton and McCain are doing this because it's good for 
the politicians, not for America.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that we can get past the campaign silly season, 
that people explain to Senator McCain and Senator Clinton that their 
earlier opposition is more important today. This is one area ought to 
be beyond sort of the partisan political warfare: It is time for us to 
rebuild and renew America, to deal with the first deficit in the trust 
fund, and not play political games.




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