[mvpel]

For many, gasoline is a mandatory expense. And this legislation disproportionately hits middle and lower income households that tend to have longer commutes to work and must drive in order to work. These families will be hit especially hard by the projected $1 per gallon increase for the additional gas tax the cap-and-trade legislation will bring.

This, as I see it, was the fulcrum of last year's tipping point into economic decline - poor and moderate-income households with mortgages they couldn't really afford had to choose between buying $4.50 a gallon gasoline in order to get to work in their 10-year-old low-MPG beater cars, and paying their mortgage.

[Grumpybutt]

I agree. I remember the guy who was from somewhere north, not sure of the state. Anyway he was calling in about his kids I think and how he was a business owner and the real mortgage crisis was people couldn’t afford the energy prices, gas prices, and mortgages all together and that people who had gotten the funny loans, they could have made their payments if it weren’t for the increase in everything else all at once.

I remember when gas was in the $3+ range and I was driving 75 miles per day round trip- it was nothing for us to spend $125 per week on fuel just to get to work. There was no extra spending.