The gas tax holiday

John McCain’s gas tax “holiday” is likely not to see the light of day. Unless the Shrillda Beast gets on board with it in a big way, the Dem controlled congress is not likely to pass a law with the Rep presidential candidate’s name on it that lower gas prices. Dems wouldn’t want Americans thanking John McCain for the five bucks they saved on every fill up all summer long.

Also, once that tax is gone, nobody wants to be the pol that turns around and raises gas prices 18-20 cents in one fell swoop for no other reason than Labor Day has arrived. The timing is all wrong. The price would be set to go up in Sep just weeks before a national election. That would result in Rep candidates yelling, “If Dems let the gas holiday expire they are raising your taxes!! Vote Rep for lower gas prices!” So the easy way to avoid the mess is not allow it to happen.

You can bet Dems are in all day meetings trying to figure out a way to be for the gas tax holiday while looking for political maneuvering that will never allow it to happen. About a week after Memorial Day look for land baron Scrawny Harry Reid to tell his golden horde of MSM lemmings that the Dems tried to pass the gas tax holiday but the mean Reps wouldn’t go along with the free condoms for 3rd graders program so the deal broke down.

To be honest other than helping John McCain out, I don’t believe the gas tax holiday is a good idea. It will have the opposite effect of what is intended. By driving the price of gas down, usage will rise putting an additional strain on an already tight gas commodity market. And as most of us know when supplies of something diminish prices increase.

Here’s a news flash. The requirement for oil is going to continue to increase for the foreseeable future. As the requirement for oil continues to rise, so will the price. As noble as conservation is, we cannot conserve enough to off-set the global rise in demand for oil. We need to do both, conserve and find new sources of oil and energy.

The only good that I can see that will come of the John McCain’s gas tax holiday is that as the price of gas continues to rise there will be more and more pressure on pols to ignore tree huggers and go out and drill for oil as well as build more refineries and nuclear power plants. Increasing domestic supply is the short term answer, but it is not THE answer. It provides short term relief that will provide a skilled worker job boost, help wean us from supplying some of the world’s worst tyrants with US petro-dollars and stabilize oil costs.

The problem is that if we start today, it’ll be 5 years before we begin to see any results other than on the hiring of skilled workers. That’s no reason not to start. And for the love humanity, let’s stop burning our food supply for fuel.