Paying Twice To Fill Up Your Gas Tank
Since Bush’s proposals for dealing with the price of gas have turned out to be nothing more than gimmicks, here’s the Senate Republicans’ election year plan for dealing with high gas prices: cut $100 checks to Americans to help them pay for it.
Just a week ago the Republican House passed an energy bill laden with tax breaks for oil companies (on top of the many subsidies and tax breaks passed in previous years). They did this despite record oil industry profits (last year, Exxon Mobil posted the highest profits ever for a single company in US history). So it looks like there will be no added revenue coming into the government from the oil industry (or anywhere else) to cover the cost of these $100 checks. Which means these checks will be paid for with deficit spending. When spent by US drivers, a good portion of each of those $100 checks will end up in the coffers of the Saudis and other foreign oil producers. In all likelihood they will then use some of that money to continue buying up US Treasury bills, which finance our deficit spending.* We, our children, and our grandchildren will then – through our federal taxes – pay them interest every year on those treasury bills.
Some things in life are priceless – for everything else, there’s deficit spending.
