After all, he called his a PERMANENT relief to middle class families. And permanent is hardly ever IMMEDIATE; (so it most likely wouldn't do anything about this summer). It could go for gas, groceries, healthcare, or whatever the family chooses. None of them 9including McCain) has found anything IMMEDIATE THAT WORKS that will lower fuel prices at the pump. Even Bush (scary) recently said one of the "smartest" things that I've ever heard come out of his mouth, regarding this very thing. The also scary thing is that both HRC and McCain suported a gas tax holiday (Democrat and Republican, rather than Democart VS. Republican), while the other Democrat opposed it (not along party lines). HRC should more resemble the other Democrat Obama (as she does in the rest of her general policy platform) than McCain. It is no surprise that their policies are very similar across the board; it's as it should be: both are Democrats. Their policies SHOULD contrast more sharply with the Republican's than with each other's. Yet, HRC also sounds like McCain on "nuke Iran" comments.
Running on Fumes
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On screen graphic: "political pandering" USA Today, 4/29/2008
Narrator: It's an election-year gimmick that would save Carolinians just pennies a day.
On screen graphic: "poll-driven gimmickry," Wall Street Journal, 4/16/2008
Narrator: Barack Obama's plan? Take on price gouging by oil companies. Tax their windfall profits. Invest in alternative energy. Give working families a permanent $1000 tax cut to help with rising costs. That's change we can believe in.
Obama: I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message.
Barack Obama pushed back with an ad of his own, accusing Clinton of "political pandering" with "poll-driven gimmickry." The ad goes on to explain that Obama has a plan to tackle price gouging, tax windfall profits, invest in alternative energy and give a $1000 tax cut to "working families." But Obama's ad manages to squeeze in some misrepresentation and pandering of its own all while falsely implying that his plan is significantly different from Clinton's.
The biggest distortion in Obama's ad is his pledge to "give working families a permanent $1,000 tax cut to help with rising costs" of gas. It's true that Obama is offering to offset payroll taxes on the first $8,100 of each family's income. That credit could be worth as much as $1,000 per family. But Obama is wrong to imply that this cut is designed specifically to "help with rising costs" of energy. The proposal is part of a tax plan that Obama unveiled in September 2007. In fact, because Obama is proposing a tax credit, Americans wouldn't see any money until they file their 2008 taxes – something that won't happen until January 2009. Clinton is not proposing a similar broad-based tax cut, but she has called for a whole range of other middle-class tax cuts.
Obama also promises to "take on price gouging." The claim that oil companies are manipulating gas prices is popular on the campaign trail: Clinton has similarly called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate "market manipulation in wholesale oil prices" so that oil companies are not "ripping off consumers." But what Obama doesn't mention is that the FTC has conducted price-gouging investigations before, most notably in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The FTC found "no instances of illegal market manipulation" and concluded that the price increases "were approximately what would be predicted by the standard supply-and-demand model of a market performing competitively."
That's not to say that market manipulation (or price-gouging) is impossible. And the FTC, as well as state attorneys general, may well be conducting further probes even as we write this (they're generally supposed to be confidential until they're completed). But most economists say that gasoline prices have more to do with market forces than with oil company shenanigans.
Obama's plans to tax on oil company windfall profits and invest $150 billion in alternative energy research are as advertised. What he doesn't mention is that Clinton's energy plan calls for spending an identical $150 billion in alternative energy research. One-third of the money would go into a $50 billion "Strategic Energy Fund," which would be funded by a "windfall profits fee" on oil companies. We've said before that there is very little in the way of substantive policy daylight between Clinton and Obama. The Washington Post found that the two senators voted the same way 93.8 percent of the time, and interest groups across the political spectrum awarded them similar scores.
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