As the U.S. economy teeters on the brink of recession, Democratic leaders are revisiting an idea born of the Great Depression: gas stamps to help Americans cope with high fuel prices.
The proposal to subsidize fuel costs for lower-income families and individuals would almost certainly be popular with white, working-class voters and could boost Barack Obama’s appeal with that critical voting bloc in this year’s presidential election.
Democratic lawmakers and their leaders say they are serious about including it in a second economic stimulus package expected to move this month. Meanwhile, Republicans ridicule the idea as a return to welfare-state politics, which they say characterized the Democratic Party before Bill Clinton.
“It’s certainly under consideration,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told The Hill on Thursday afternoon. “It would be like food stamps for those people who need help.”
Gas stamps would work like traditional food stamps, which some Americans have collected since the 1930s. They would be used, however, to pay for regular unleaded instead of meat and potatoes.
Under one version of the proposal, a person earning up to $31,200 or a family of four earning up to $63,600 could receive government payments totaling $500 for gas.
Hoyer said he was not ready to discuss details about the proposal because he is focused on passing a comprehensive energy bill Democrats unveiled this week...
But some Democratic strategists think that gas stamps could help Obama and other candidates appeal to voters in rural and exurban areas, a demographic that leans toward the GOP.
Democratic strategist Chris Lehane said that the presidential election will likely come down to “2 or 3 percent of the electorate in a handful of battleground states” and that working-class men and women from rural and exurban areas could decide the results.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Gosh, you might think they were trying to... I dunno... “buy votes” or something.
Here we go. More democrat strategies to bribe the American electorate.
Problem is, like food stamps, they will never go away, no matter how low fuel prices go.
IDIOTS. Rush is so right--they love the idea that the economy's in trouble (never mind that the housing mortage problem was created by Democrat legislation that put pressure on banks to make subprime loans and relieved them of the consequences). Anything they can use to push us toward socialism is fine with the Dems.
The 'Rats want nothing less than to destroy our free market system and replace it with a command economy under the control of socialist bureaucrats.