Georgia governor plans to lift state gas tax for rest of the month

Years and years ago - but it seems my memory is better - and I just _love_ your brilliant explanation for why I am wrong.

So you support quadrupling the gas tax and do not expect that to change the price of gas?

Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), a dangerous embarrassment.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com
Democrats Have No Energy Answer
September 1, 2005[]

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, let me give you an example. Here in Florida, I just had this story sent to me. This is from today's Tallahassee Democrat. Is that what the name of the paper is? Yeah, the Tallahassee Democrat. The headline story: "Nelson Calls for Freeze on Gasoline Prices -- Senator Warns of New Bid for Drilling in Gulf." That's... Warns of new drilling in Gulf! This illustrates the point I wish to open with. Liberals have absolutely no answer to the gasoline issue. The Democrats and the Sierra Club-inspired environmentalist wackos and liberals have no answer to the gasoline issue. Bill Nelson is calling for price controls! Chuck Schumer is calling for releasing oil from the strategic reserve -- and what happens after the 60-day supply of that runs out? Hillary Clinton is urging investigations of price gouging, all of which does zero. It does absolutely nothing to increase the supply and lower prices, and that's how prices come down. This is economics 101. It's all supply and demand here, folks. I'm not going to say there's no gouging; I'm not going to say there's no profiteering going on, but that's not what's causing this, and if you'd take care of the gouging and the profiteering you're still going to be paying a price higher than you were yesterday and the day before and last week because the supply is down. The supply has been interrupted. You cannot take 30 million gallons of gasoline off the market and have the price stay the same. It's just not possible, and what we have here, with Nelson calling for a freeze on gasoline -- how do you do this? How in the world do you freeze gasoline prices? I heard somebody suggest last night that we actually enact a law that the president, by executive order, tell the oil companies to reduce their profits by 20%. How do you do this? The oil company profiteering and profits are not the problem. The gas stations gouging are not the problem.

These are incidental problems, and again, I'm not taking them for granted or saying they're irrelevant, but that's not why all this is happening. This was predictable, folks, just like this storm and what's happened to New Orleans. Everybody is saying it was predictable because we didn't have levees down there that were big enough and strong enough to handle anything stronger than a category three storm. I hate to remind you, but I and others have been telling you for years that we haven't built any new refineries, and we're not developing our own domestic supplies of oil and its refined products, including which is gasoline and jet fuel. All it takes is one interruption, and bammo! Guess where we are? We're right where we are. We are a growing economy. You cannot grow an economy without growing every []aspect of it, particularly the fuel of the engine of that economy, which is oil. It is just plain common sense. So now in addition to the interruptions that we've had because of a natural disaster that was not manmade, we have these "solutions" which are not solutions and not answers at all. Price controls on gasoline are not going to get us any more gasoline. Bill Nelson may think it's going to get him votes next year, but it isn't going to get us a drop more gasoline. Releasing oil from the strategic reserve is not going to get us appreciably more gasoline, particularly in the short run, and if this disaster -- and certainly the recovery is going to last longer than two months. The strategic reserve is going to be gone, and then what do we do -- and Hillary Clinton, congressional investigations now? Yeah, okay, let's take that even a step further, and let's have congressional investigations into what happened in New Orleans. Let's have Congress fix it, the normal way they fix things.

This is why, last week, I went into great detail about who it is that makes the country work, and it's not these elites who live in the northeast or other parts of the country who are not affected by these things who then dare to come forward and give us their answers. This Bill Nelson story is particularly dangerous because not only does the senator -- the Democrat senator from this state, Florida -- not only does he suggest that we freeze the price of gasoline, he's out there "warning," he's warning of a new bid for drilling for oil in the Gulf, as though that would be an added crime! In addition to the price going up, an added crime would be drilling for oil and finding more of it. I said yesterday on this program: "This is going to provide a glorious opportunity for the anti-development, anti-growth, pro-environmentalist wacko left to step forward and show themselves," and thank you, Senator Nelson. You have made me once again a prophet and a seer. You have just illustrated for the people of your state and this country what an absolute ignoramus you are when it comes to this subject. He is more concerned with currying favor with Democrat environmentalist-leaning voters than he is in solving the problem. What did we say yesterday? These people on the left of the liberal persuasion offer no solutions. They whine and they complain. Freezing prices isn't going to get you any more gasoline. When you go to the gas pump, what do you want? You want gasoline, right? Who cares what it costs if there isn't any? Bill Nelson support going to get you any more. Chuck Schumer is not going to get you any more.
[]
Hillary Clinton is not going to get you any more (story). None of the Democrats I've heard speaking on this are going to get you a drop more gasoline. They're going to get you higher prices. They're going to create panic. They're going to create shortages, but they're not going to get you any gasoline. In all my dreams, I never thought that it would only take one day for this glaring ignorance to show up -- and in no less than a personage than a United States senator whose big concern... You see what's happening in New Orleans. You see the suffering. You see it's incomprehensible, and we've got a US senator worrying about, "We might drill for oil in Florida! (Gasp!)" And he's sounding the warning bells. Now, no doubt this will manifest itself in some way, when you go on the Democrats websites, as: "Bush manifested this. Bush has always wanted to drill for more oil. He's always wanted to drill for more. Now he has the reason to!" I don't know what kind of inane, insane, cockamamie explanations they'll come up with, but they don't need to add to it because they're already illustrating it. The idea, the idea that in the face of all this we don't realize how vulnerable we are because we can't handle -- when we can't handle, folks, four refineries going down, when we can't handle one refinery going down, when we can't handle a refinery losing the ability to be online, what does that tell you about what we've been doing the last 20 years?

I get so sick of hearing all these complaints. We've been warning New Orleans for 40 years. We've got that idiot, Sidney Blumenthal -- who can only be published in German magazines for some reason -- now saying that Bush is responsible for what happened in New Orleans because he cut FEMA budgets back in 2001 in order to fund the war in Iraq. Mr. Blumenthal, who did you work for eight years, and what the hell did you people do in those eight years? because we've been warned about New Orleans for 40. Where was your "investment," so to speak? With all of your tax increases, where is all the investment that you people in the Clinton administration sent down to New Orleans? Frankly, folks, to have to speak about this in this fashion is repugnant to me. On Monday I told you this was going to happen. I hoped it wouldn't happen. I have to come here every day and respond to the loony left, while the real story is on our television screens is just repugnant to me. But I don't know what to do. I can't sit out here and let some of this just go by. I can't let what some of these people are saying go uncommented on. I can rely on the fact that the other networks and media are focusing on what's happening in New Orleans and the Gulf coast region. But some of this stuff has to be responded to, and I'm going to continue to do it as long as they make it necessary.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want you to hear some of the quotes from Senator Nelson in this speech that he gave to the Economic Club of Florida luncheon speech yesterday. He "said the president should use his influence to 'jawbone' the [oil] industry into freezing gas prices - as he said the administration did in the interest of economic recovery after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But Nelson said long-term solutions to the fuel problem lie in making the auto industry produce more 'hybrid' cars that run on gasoline and electricity and wider use of alcohol-mixed fuels." Senator Nelson, you're an embarrassment, sir, and I have no recourse but than to say it. Hybrids? Today? In this situation? Hybrids, senator? A wider use of alcohol mixed fuels, electricity? Let me tell you what an automobile executive told me two weeks ago about hybrids. If everybody could be made tomorrow to be driving a hybrid -- every automobile on the street today thrown away, replaced by a hybrid -- it would only take six years for us to get right back where we are in terms of the use of fossil fuels and gasoline, because we are a growing economy. Hybrids are not the answer! Alternatives are not the answer, particularly now. You go to a gas station where there's no regular, senator, and you tell the people who have to buy premium unleaded or super high test unleaded, you tell them, "Well, if you were driving a hybrid..."

"What do you mean, senator? There's no gasoline, period, in the regular pump!"

Go there and tell them your solution.

[] Leave the Economic Club of Florida and go out to the gas pumps and tell people that they shouldn't be driving the cars they're driving; they ought to be driving hybrids and they'll tell you, "What difference would it make today, senator?" It's just unfathomable. You know, sometimes you think that the people that are in elected positions and have had previously held high-esteem jobs are maybe a little smarter than the rest of us, but more and more you learn that they are not as smart and that that's one of the problems. It gets even worse, though. After suggesting the solution to this problem is hybrids, Nelson then "said he stifled offshore drilling in the past by mounting a filibuster on energy legislation. But he said oil lobbyists now plan to attach a drilling-authorization amendment to a tax bill that is not subject to filibuster." But "Nelson said 'I've got an ace up my sleeve" in dealing with the Interior Department and oil companies..." He said, "'They are absolutely hell-bent that they are going to drill off our coast. The oil industry and the secretary of interior, Gale Norton, are coming back at us since we beat them last time, and we beat them because I did my first filibuster.' Nelson said 'they've hatched a plan' to attach a drilling amendment to a fiscal bill 'that cannot be filibustered.' But Nelson said he will use military needs for jet training and naval firing ranges to head off such an amendment." Thank you, Senator Nelson, thank you for speaking to the Democratic Party.

Exactly what I forecast yesterday has already come to pass. We now learn that you have no interest in producing more oil. You have no interest in solving this problem. You have no understanding of the laws of supply and demand -- and Senator Nelson, along with Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton? So long as your record of opposition to energy exploration and production, as long as that's your record and you keep embracing the extremist, no-growth policies of the environmentalist left, you cannot deal with the reality before you, and you shouldn't be in a position to deal with that reality because you are showing that you will not deal with it and you will not understand it. I'm sorry to keep emphasizing this, folks, but you know what they say. "Say it over and over and over, because people are tuning in all the time, and it's got to be heard one time, two times, three times it takes to sink in." Here we're in the midst of a gasoline supply crisis, and that's what this is: a gasoline supply crisis. There is no shortage. There is just a supply crisis, and what does Bill Nelson want to do? Nothing! He wants to freeze gas prices, which will have zero effect. He wants to somehow punish the oil companies, and he wants to make sure we don't drill for any more oil.
[]
I hope more people like Senator Nelson come forward and make it as crystal clear as he has where the anti-growth, pro-environmentalist Democrats and leftists today stand. You know, the reality here is supply and demand, just like Mother Nature. Liberals think that they can change it. They think they can change Mother Nature by doing something with global warming, with fossil fuel production. They also think that they can change the laws of supply and demand with hybrids and freezing prices and whatever other cockamamie ideas that they come up with. Oh, let's not forget Mrs. Clinton who wants to convene immediately it is anti-gouging hearings up on Capitol Hill. For 35 years these people have advanced an agenda of obstructing energy exploration and production, and that 35-year history is what has made us vulnerable to disruption -- and this storm constitutes the disruption. Now we're vulnerable because we haven't been allowed to build a refinery; we can't drill for any more oil; committee cannot expand our own domestic supply, and thus we are where we are. They can talk conservation all they want. You can talk conservation all you want but you still have to drive from home to work and then back. You still have to drive from home to school and then back. Senator Schumer, Senator Clinton, not everybody in America takes mass transit, and they don't want to, and they won't.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, this energy business, though, we're still not quite through here. The bottom line here is we don't need to put a brake on our economy right now, and everything that I'm hearing from Democrat politicians would do just that. Bill Nelson: "Freeze gas prices! No oil drilling, and make sure that there's no price gouging!" Hillary Clinton: "Congressional hearings on no price gouging!" and Chuck Schumer...whatever the hell it is that he wants. Oh! The strategic reserve. Rather than put a brake on our economy and the energy industry right now, we need to press down the accelerator, folks. We need to hit the pedal to the metal and get going on our entire energy industry -- and that means production of new resources, development and production and construction of new and greater, bigger refineries. There's no greater time than now, and there's no greater example of the reasons why than now. To me, it is pathetic to listen to all of these anti-growth people come up and actually start sounding warning bells that we may actually produce more oil, that there's going to be a trick and a conspiracy to make sure we drill for more oil -- as though that's a crime, as though what's happening in New Orleans has no relevance to crime, as though the fact that we can't deal with this, that's not criminal. The fact that we haven't been able to deal with this kind of thing, that's not criminal. That we didn't make plans, that we didn't take precautions, that we didn't look forward enough -- oh, no, no, no, that's not criminal! What's criminal is to drill for oil, to keep the engine of the world's greatest economy going. (sigh)

I mean, Diane Sawyer in this interview, the left, they've all said -- just to show you how idiotic they are -- the whole Iraq war was about what, to them? It was about oil! It was about Bush trying to go get oil, and even at that it was not. Anything involving oil to the left is criminal: drilling for it, going to war for it, to protect the free flow of oil at market prices, that's criminal. When are our people going to wake up and realize what these people actually mean to the future of this country? Oil may as well be a poison. The people who are involved in it are criminals, and it only harms the country and the economy and the people. Meanwhile, the problems we face in this country today and especially those in the Gulf [] coast area are precisely because we don't have enough energy to meet the demand that this disaster has caused. So if we went to Iraq for oil, where is it? Where is all this oil that Bush and Halliburton went over there to try to secure? And if we went to Iraq for oil, why did we go to all the trouble? Why didn't we just go to Kuwait and say, "Hey! You know what? We're taking your oil. You can't stop us. You couldn't kick Saddam out. You needed us. What are you going to do? We're going to take your oil." We could say the same thing to people in Qatar. We're there. "Your oil is ours. Screw you!" Why don't we just do that? Why go to war and do all this? The left is senseless. The left is brain dead. The left is so warped, for who knows what reasons. I don't even care anymore. All I know is that they are warped to the point of posing a serious threat themselves with this kind of inane thinking and posture.

Look, we can't even drill in a 2,000-square-acre area in the biggest state in the union that is not a wildlife refuge. It is a tundra. The same thing they're saying about ANWR is what they said about the whole Alaska pipeline. No damage for the Alaska pipeline, particularly to wildlife, only improvement in the circumstances for wildlife. We can't even drill in a 2,000-acre area in the biggest state in the union. They say ANWR won't make a difference, yet they demand the release of far less oil from the strategic reserve. That's their big idea. ANWR won't make a difference but let's tap the strategic reserve. Folks, it's insane! It's absurd. ANWR was first proposed in 1995 and if it had passed in 1995 we would have already have finished the construction and we would have oil flowing. It was ten years ago, and we'd have a million barrels a day. You don't think those million barrels a day would pick up a little slack for what's happening today?

"It wouldn't make a difference."

What do you mean? Of course it would make a difference when we have no margin for error as this storm has illustrated! We have no margin for error!

"A million barrels a day? That's not going to make any difference. We can't drill up there. Noooo, let's go tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve."

We can't listen to these people. We cannot rely on them. This country will not be what this country has been if we rely on these people and it is becoming patently obvious to any casual observer even today, and for that I will thank the people on the left, and for that I hope you keep talking, and I hope for every Senator Bill Nelson there is another one that comes forth to echo him, and to pat him on the back and say, "Way to talk, senator!" and I hope the next one is Hillary Clinton, and then I hope she's followed by Chuck Schumer, and then I hope Teddy Kennedy gets in on this.

END TRANSCRIPT
[]
Read the Articles...
(TallahasseeDemocrat: Nelson calls for freeze on gasoline prices)
(AP: Hillary Clinton says administration should act to prevent fuel price gouging)
(Los Angeles Times: A Diminished FEMA Scrambles to the Rescue)
(Slate: "No one can say they didn't see it coming" - Sidney Blumenthal)

How You Can Help...
• Click here for a list of charitable and corporate efforts that need your help

Thank you Mr. Perdue. It takes a tough man to tax amend for stricken consumers.

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue said he will sign an executive order Friday that will exempt consumers from state motor fuel taxes through the end of September to "relieve some of the financial burden" in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

It's over $3.00 a gallon in a lot of areas. This is one bandwagon I hope all the other governors jump on.

I'm cynical - I doubt seriously that retailers will pass the savings along to the consumers. They'll just pocket it and keep going.

Thanks for nothing, Sonny.

"So you support quadrupling the gas tax and do not expect that to change the price of gas?"

Easy there partner. I scanned through paulcox1978's post and saw nothing about him suggesting that we raise taxes. Did i miss it, or are you purposely ignoring what he said?

If you're lazy like me and don't have the time to read the entire Limbaugh transcript, you can hear the entire thing by clicking the link below (Windows Media Player stream):

http://mfile.akamai.com/5020/wma/rushlimb.download.akamai.com/5020/clips/05/09/090105_1_gas.asx

Quadrupling the gas tax will also not reduce the price at the pump, so it is a ridiculous notion.

"Way to go Sonny Perdue! This will actually help matters, a lot."

A week or so ago, Rush proposed that this is one of the things that Bush should do - by executive order.

Bzzt. Dropping the tax means one less cost in gasoline delivery. Gas stations that don't drop the price accordingly will be undercut and outsold by those that do (having recognized they don't have an extra $0.075+4% overhead to pass on to consumers). The price WILL go down; perhaps asymptotically and never quite reach the full theoretical drop, but it will drop significantly. Now let's make sure he doesn't tack it back on later...

BZZT. Wrong again. Please return to Economics 101. The principle is called supply and demand. The price is set by demand for the existing supply. The consumer does not care what part of the price is cost, tax or profit. Most have no idea of the breakdown. They know what the final price they pay is. If the price is high based on restricted supply, the net price will stay there regardless of how the internal cost structure is configured. I'm a low tax proponent, but this is a futile and foolish act based on emotion, not logic. It will only cost the state revenue, it will not help the consumer one bit other than psychologically.

"We simply need more refining capacity -- It's not price. "

At the moment it's price due to a shortage in production because of the refineries offline in MI and LA as well as offshore rigs in the Gulf being offline. It'll be a month before that mess is straightened out.

IT IS a good time to consider building new refineries and get the red tape finished for oil exploration in ANWR, but the refineries will take years to go online and ANWR will take more than a year if the paperwork were filed by interested companies today.

The moratorium on fuel additives by the president is to offset this immediate and LOOMING problem - though it's only for 2 weeks and IMO two weeks isn't enough. The tax moratorium by Georgia's governor is to help the local economy from being squeezed to death by sky-high gas prices. Even though some people tritely inform us we must use less, everyone who works uses a certain minimum below which they cannot go.

"it's time to start promoting working from home!! "

It's also time to start promoting the small neighborhood school or school from home. "Learning on line" -- from the best teachers in each subject on the planet. bttt

So I have a tanker of gas to sell, in Mississippi I can get $2.50 a gallon, in Georgia I can get $2.20 a gallon. Choices choices.

If you lower the price of a commodity when there is a shortage you will get more shortages -- Not more of the commodity. Lowering the price produces not one additional gallon of gas. If you allow the price to rise to strike a balance with the market, demand vs price, you will alleviate the shortage and those that must will buy.

Free markets will find the optimum free market price. If you try price fixing, your next step will be to become the distributor and start demanding supply be equalized. The spiral is endless, as the managed economies have found over and over again.

Shortages will disrupt the economy, price cuts will please the people. Choices.

A $0.60 to $3.00 price difference overnight?

If you haven't heard the news, a major hurricane devastated a significant portion of America's drilling and refining capacity, also overnight.

$3 per gallon, 18 gallons to fill:
18x7=$1.26
$54x.045=2.43
2.43+1.26=$3.69 per fill up on my truck...

"If you lower the price of a commodity when there is a shortage you will get more shortages "

I know which is why I laid out the difference between the president's additive moratotuim and the governor's gas moratoruim. Also, I was AGREEING with you that we need more refineries, just pointing out for everyone (for the 100th time) that more refineries will fix the problem 5 years from now, not now.

>So I have a tanker of gas to sell, in Mississippi I can get $2.50 a gallon, in Georgia I can get $2.20 a gallon. Choices choices.<

Dropping state taxes will neither increase or decrease supply.It may marginaly lower the pressure higher prices were putting on demand.Their is enough price competition in the Atlanta market to assured it will result in a corresponding price reduction.

Easy there partner. I scanned through paulcox1978's post and saw nothing about him suggesting that we raise taxes. Did i miss it, or are you purposely ignoring what he said?

tfecw, you're right. This is typical of this thread. Nobody who has disagreed with the economic analysis I provided (an analysis also provided by many other posters and supported by both economic theory and historical evidence) has offered a substantive rebuttal to any of my arguments. Those supporting this tax cut on this thread offer something closer to "Rock on! Taxes suck! Democrats are idiots!" instead of offering an explanation of why they believe (if they've thought that far) that these tax cuts will actually have the desired effect. In this case, the response was "You're wrong, you just want to quadruple taxes."

Of course, the cynic in me thinks that the transfer of tax funds to the coffers of the oil companies is, indeed, the 'desired effect'. Scary thought... the governor redirects tax dollars to the oil companies while scoring politically by looking like he's actually 'doing something' for the people.

"So I have a tanker of gas to sell"....

You sell it to the highest bidder on one of the commodity exchanges.

NYMEX unleaded for October 05 delivery was $2.1837 (down $0.2253).

For January 06 delivery it was $1.9287 (down $0.652).

The NYMEX wholesale trader doesn't care what your state gasoline taxes are, although you probably should.

Yesterday it peaked at $2.45 for October delivery.

Let's estimate what pump price that implies. Take $2.45, add the state gas tax ($0.075), the Federal gas tax ($0.184), mark it up 10% for transportation, credit card charges, and profit, add the state sales tax (6%), and this morning's pump price should be (drum roll)....

No less than $3.16 per gallon.....