You're reading a post titled “A gas-tax holiday is completely useless pandering” from the archives of Big Contrarian. It was originally published on April 29th, 2008 at 12:05 PM. If you enjoy it, you should subscribe to this site’s RSS feed, or its Twitter page.

A gas-tax holiday is completely useless pandering:

“It’s basic economics,” said Leonard Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center, a non-partisan thinktank. “Gas is always in very short supply during the summer, which is why prices go up. In order to reduce the price, you would have to increase supply, but that is difficult over the short term, because the refineries cannot add capacity.”

Barack Obama, who voted for the Illinois temporary moratorium back in 2000, seems to have learned his lesson:

Barack Obama opposes it (as does George Bush), saying his experience with a similar move in Illinois shows that the oil companies won’t pass the savings on to consumers, and it won’t encourage conservation.

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