Now it all makes sense.... as long as the American consumer doesn't get a bit of direct relief first:
"I'll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we'll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills," the Illinois senator said.
It's a full-Democratic congressional push, so it just might have a chance...
"Senators were to vote Tuesday on whether to consider a windfall profits tax against the five largest U.S. oil companies and rescind $17 billion in tax breaks the companies expect to enjoy over the next decade."
but golly, I wonder who brought up the issue of oil tax reform first.... even before Harry Reid and the Democratic gang finally spoke up to support it.... ah, but she was just a girl, who listens to them?
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Has he lost his mind?
Everyone in the entire blogosphere will pounce on him for this cheap pandering, like you've never seen!
Won't they?
Well, The Best Part Of Hillary's Proposal
...was that part of it which said that it was the oil companies who ought to be paying some sort of windfall profits for whatever it is that is driving up the price of oil, Iraq, anyone?
Frankly, I'd argue that on the merits, this is a better way to go about it than repealing the gas taxes for the Summer, since that was highly unlikely to happen anyway. So there could be a reason that other liberal/progressives might not see this as pandering. Of course when we are talking about either Clinton, the overkill is always there, and I certainly feel a quasi-permanent sense of disgust the way so much of the left blogisphere seemed to forget everything we'd learn in the nineties, and especially around the candidacy of Al Gore in 2000 about how the SCLM
operates.
Happy to see you back from your emeritus sabbatical, vastleft.
Thanks, Leah
I totally agree. I was about to avow that I thought the gas-tax holiday was a pander, if a harmless one... and then I saw her getting Bill Fucking O'Reilly nodding along with the idea of windfall-taxing Big Oil, and I saw something I hadn't seen for a long, long time: the Overton Window moving leftward.
The massive lek -- which completely ignored this essential dimension of her proposal -- about this proved to be yet another sickening example of CDS.
The Other Thing Hillary's Proposal Did
was take away the issue from McCain. He's going to be re-launching his tax cut plan and why wouldn't he, it's politically popular. His version is also incredibly irresponsible since it doesn't provide any mechanism to pay for it.
The brilliance of Hillary's plan was how smart it was politically. It tied the windfall (which is popular) with a tax rebate (which is popular) and then would dare the GOP to oppose it.
Now, we may very well get a vetoed windfall tax and McCain's tax cut. And, yeah, I know Nancy Pelosi said even Hillary's plan was DOA on the Hill. But given the continued rise in gas prices (mine is up 28 cents a gallon since last week at the Arco), there's going to be increasing pressure for the federal government to DO something. Democrats have no alternative plan that would provide any price relief.
Good on them for the windfall part, but that's not going to solve the political problem of needed to be seen as caring about gas prices and willing to try to do something about it.
"I wonder who brought up the issue of oil tax reform first..."
Hello everyone. I haven't participated here in a while, but I thought I might ease my way back into discussions. We'll see how it goes.
For the record, Obama's windfall profits tax proposal isn't new. He proposed it in response to McCain's gas tax holiday on April 25th.
Clinton first proposed her gas tax holiday, paid for by a windfall tax, on April 28th.
Now, I don't know if either candidate had a windfall profit tax proposal - independent of the gas tax holiday debate - prior to these dates. But Obama didn't just bring this out yesterday.
wait a minute
this is not possible.
nancy pelosi declared just a few weeks ago that this kind of legislation was doa.
apply cpr to the doa and that old proposal is up and walking again.
will miracles never cease.
who was it here talked about obama and lazrus?