Take some of the windfall profits of big oil to pay to suspend the gas tax this summer.
VOICEOVER: These days it costs fifty bucks to fill up the tank. How can North Carolina families afford that?
Hillary Clinton knows it's time to act.
Take some of the windfall profits of big oil to pay to suspend the gas tax this summer. Investigate the oil giants for price gouging and collusion. Make the oil companies invest in new green energy sources that free us from foreign oil and bring gas prices down to earth.
With gas this expensive talk is cheap. It's time for leadership.
HILLARY CLINTON: I'm Hillary Clinton and I approve this message.
1 comment
#1 Mike Duncan May 21, 2008
I find this ad pandering, dishonest, and offensive. Hillary Clinton (as well as John McCain) fully knows the following:
Firms set their prices not according to their costs but according to the price that consumers are willing to pay. They take taxes and extra costs into account when determining this.
Thus any gas tax holiday will only partially end up in the hands of the consumers, as the price of gas will fall less than the tax difference, because the producers recognize the elasticity of the market.
To claim that the high price of gasoline is not fundamentally caused by the behavior of consumers (and the populace itself) is irresponsibly misleading. Telling people there is a shadowy 'Other' (the oil companies, the IRS) who is causing their woes is a very old political technique, and I don't like it no matter how much I don't like the group being falsely blamed.