Posted on 01/09/2015 8:10:11 AM PST by SeekAndFind
For 32 years I’ve been advocating a major tax on petroleum. I’ve got as much chance this time around as did Don Quixote with windmills. But I shall tilt my lance once more.
The only time you can even think of proposing a gas-tax increase is when oil prices are at rock bottom. When I last suggested the idea six years ago, oil was selling at $40 a barrel. It eventually rose back to $110. It’s now around $48. Correspondingly, the price at the pump has fallen in the last three months by more than a dollar to about $2.20 per gallon.
As a result, some in Congress are talking about a ten- or 20-cent hike in the federal tax to use for infrastructure spending. Right idea, wrong policy. The hike should not be 10 cents but $1. And the proceeds should not be spent by, or even entrusted to, the government. They should be immediately and entirely returned to the consumer by means of a cut in the Social Security tax.
The average American buys about twelve gallons of gas a week. Washington would be soaking him for $12 in extra taxes. Washington should therefore simultaneously reduce everyone’s FICA tax by $12 a week. Thus the average driver is left harmless. He receives a $12 per week FICA bonus that he can spend on gasoline if he wants — or anything else. If he chooses to drive less, it puts money in his pocket. (The unemployed would have the $12 added to their unemployment insurance; the elderly, added to their Social Security check.)
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Krauthammer...still drunk on the wine from George Will’s dinner party love-in with Obama in 2009.
“D.C. Chuck” wouldn’t even think of this, as you well know.
I wish Kraphammer would just stuff it. I have had it with his psoturing on FOX as though he was a conservative, when every once in a while like here and with the Second Amendment he demonstrates that his Democrat Roots were never removed.
He is just another RINO. SMarter than most, but a RINO nonetheless.
I do not approve of social engineering through tax law. Taxes should be for revenue only, and free Americans should be free to decide how to spend their money and their time without coercion or incentives. Tax incentives are invariably corrupted and inefficient.
Yet another policy from our political elite that hammers the middle class worker.
Much better would be a tariff on incoming foreign oil and refined products. This helps support our oil and natgas producers and the frackers,
$10-$20 per barrel tariff would be good
Screw the “average” American. I drive 1,100 miles per week and $1 a gallon increase would be roughly $40 per week for me while my taxes have gone up on everything else, my insurance cost has gone up, the cost of food and everything has gone up. When and only when I have a federal government that does only it’s constitutionally defined job and nothing more would I consider supporting any tax increases on anything. I watch sound barriers going up along interstates to protect sub divisions that were built after the interstate and I know that money is coming out of my taxes, I watch rails to trails being built and a handful of people using it that came out of my taxes, I watch public transportation where the any given bus has 3 passengers at any given time and hear talk about if they only had more tax money they could expand the bus routes, screw them all.
Lots of people drive over 100 miles to/from work every day, that’s 600 or more miles a week just going to work.
Krautharmer is a dumba$$ when it comes to anything that isn’t urban.
Still a liberal
Just a hawk on Israel and foreign policy
Which describes quite a few 1950-1990 Democrats
Does not make a Goldwater
“Lots of people drive over 100 miles to/from work every day, “
I drove 120 miles a day for many years.
” Krautharmer is a dumba$$ when it comes to anything that isn’t urban.”
He and George Will oughta get married....it’s legal now : )
” Still a liberal
Just a hawk on Israel and foreign policy”
Nailed him. Also an amnesty traitor.
Argh. Posters here have a reflexive hatred of essentially everything.
If conservatives want to be empowered to govern, they must make an affirmative case for ... well ... something. It is not enough to be against everything. I can go so far as to respect those who say that they cannot vote for, say, Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush. It makes me said, because I think it sets back the conservative cause. Once true conservative opt out, why should anyone be surprised to be ignored or even maligned? It becomes a vicious circle. But ... at least I can respect the decision and agree to disagree on how to respond to politicians who are not sufficiently conservative.
But when folks say that they can discern no difference between Charles Krauthammer and, let’s say, Van Jones, well then I can’t take that person seriously. Surely you don’t believe that there is no difference.
I have a question ... Suppose I were to take Charles Krauthammer’s position as a reasonable starting point but adapted it as follows:
1. First, don’t lead with our chins. It is the Democrats that are all in for a carbon tax. Republicans favor a tax on the international petro dollars that fuel and fund much of the world’s evil; but there are other ways to tackle this evil. We should instead ask Dems, if you want $1/gallon tax on gasoline, what are you prepared to give up? And revenue neutrality is not nearly enough.
2. If Republicans agree to such a tax, then ALL gas tax revenues must go toward infrastructure improvements (and not just the incremental taxes raised). For too long the trust funds that have been set aside and cordoned off for gas tax revenue and infrastructure improvements have been raided for entirely unrelated purposes. A non-negotiable position is that the gas taxes all go toward infrastructure, as the law says they must. Enforce the law!
3. We insist upon SPENDING neutrality. Because the gas tax revenues will be spent on infrastructure improvements, the only way to keep the size of government from rising is to reduce other expenditures $1 for $1.
Instead of the reflexive reaction “CK is a Marxist,” I am asking if there could be some more affirmative response. I am not saying that my adaptations would make this 100% acceptable to those who post on Free Republic. But what I do want to suggest is that CK is on the right track in principle — let’s raise the tax on foreign petro dollars — and that I can adapt his positions and advocate for the idea but with my own adaptations in place of his not-so-appealing details.
Would that hold any appeal to anyone here?
Kraut-man is wrong on that one. Raising fuel costs impacts the poorest most, as it increases the price on everything transported and upon travel to work.
They have that incentive today. Since the government makes 18.4 cents per gallon independent of the price, the lower the pump price, the more gasoline used, the more the government makes.
Sounds like a financial rope-a-dope.
Don’t things matter, Charles?
American oil companies actually own very little of the oil they refine and distribute. Most is purchased wholesale from frackers or overseas.
They have become little more than government tax collectors. The excise taxes and gas taxes swamp their profit margins by almost an order of magnitude.
Same way with tobacco companies.
My favorite stupid tax was the Undistributed Profits Tax (UPT) of 1936. FDR was peeved at the ‘greedy’ corporations for hoarding profits and not investing. The reason investment ground to a halt was because of sky-high taxes and the fact that FDR had terrorized American business so badly they gave up.
The UPT was such a disaster that it was repealed in 1939.
LOL. You didn’t “hear” anything, of course. And if you read what I actually wrote, you would see both that revenue neutrality is not enough ... meaning that I explicitly said FEWER taxes ... and that other concessions would be necessary as well.
In writing what you’ve written, you help to make my case ... that those who post on this site reflexively shout out that everyone and everything is evil.
Truly, I am not the enemy of conservative values. I simply want the good guys to put forward an affirmative case for their positions. Our side can’t govern if our leaders don’t have a concrete agenda.
This is indeed puzzling.
We need to leave taxes alone and not use them to make winners and losers. For no matter what happens, we becomes losers when there is change. Especially conservatives, who are careful to follow the law and render unto Caesar.
When you change taxes, everyone must pause and adjust. Why? Is it worth it?
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