New York Politicians are speaking out today about the McCain/Hillary Gas Tax Bribe
[Bloomberg] said, "It’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in an awful long time from an economic point of view. I don’t understand why you think there’s any merit to it whatsoever. We’re trying to discourage people from driving and we’re trying to end our energy dependence. We don’t do that -- oh, and incidentally, we’re trying to have more money to build infrastructure. All three of those things go fly in the face of giving everybody $30 a year. The $30 bucks is not going to change anybody’s lifestyle. The billions of dollars that we would otherwise have in tax revenues can make a big difference as to what kind of a world we leave our children."
Bloomberg praised officials who opposed the "summer break on gasoline taxes which would help Chavez, Qaddafi and other people like that. I don’t know why anybody would want to do it."
Governor David Paterson expressed doubts about the plan, saying he would first need a pledge from distributors and sellers of gasoline that they would actually pass the savings on to customers.
"The benefit of the tax doesn't go directly to the consumer," said Paterson. "There's a middle man. And they can't guarantee that it's going to get there right now."
In a conference call, Clinton strategist Geoff Garin stood by the gas tax holiday, despite almost unanimous disapproval from policy wonks across the spectrum and skepticism from the press.
"Every penny counts," Garin said, and insisted that the holiday will save $70 per driver (not $30, as Obama claims)."If you live in the center of the city it may not be a big deal."
"There’s a real gap here of how some people see this from 30,000 feet", he continued, and how North Carolina and Indiana residents "experience it every day."
No word yet on how breaking up OPEC however is supposed to actually happen. Why has no one in the MSM picked up this humdinger?
She vowed to break the monopoly of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), cartel which produces 40 percent of the world's oil.
"I am tired of OPEC setting the price and determining how much supply there is, by any definition that is a monopoly," Clinton said.
"We are going to use every tool at our disposal as a nation to try to break that up."
Meanwhile, Obama once again stated his opposition to such a holiday while also campaigning in Indiana. "This isn’t a real solution. This is a gimmick," he said. "And this is what Washington does whenever there’s a big problem. They pretend that they’re solving it to try to get though a political season but they don’t really solve it. And unfortunately, after John McCain made the proposal ,I guess Sen. Clinton thought it was gonna poll well, so she said, 'Me too, I’ll do the same thing.’ and so now it’s the McCain-Clinton proposal to suspend the gas tax.
He then said, "You know people are more concerned about looking good for the cameras and for politics than they are at actually solving problems. You remember when George Bush five years ago put up a big sign in front of an aircraft carrier saying ‘Mission accomplished’ in Iraq. I’m sure they thought that was good politics. Except five years later we’re still in this war in Iraq."
Double Whammy! Obama links Clinton to McCain and Bush on Mission Accomplished Day...
"There is no reason to believe any moratorium on the gas tax will be passed on to consumers. That's first and foremost," she said. "Second, it will defeat everything we've tried to do to lower the cost of oil," noting that Democrats have been trying to shift the nation to alternative fuel sources, not promote gasoline consumption.
