Last week, I sat down to dinner with a good friend of mine who happens to also be a staunch conservative. He was convinced that the way forward was to drill for oil here at home and just increase the incentives for more fuel efficient cars or cars that didn't run on oil at all. My response was that desperation leads to innovation and if gas prices stayed high, we're more likely to get off the stuff sooner. He said we should just drill at home for 10 more years while we wait for the technology to catch up. In my opinion though, saying to give us oil now so we can get off it later is a little like telling a young kid that he can have his ice cream now but later he will have to eat his vegetables. Whereas now, as it stands, the high price of gas is forcing people to look for ways to make their cars more fuel efficient and is finally having an effect on the truck and SUV market. In addition, auto makers in the US are finally shifting towards smaller car fleets and being profitable from it.
I got an email update from my representative this last week talking about how a fellow congressman had introduced a bill to hike the gas tax to pay for infrastructure. My representative acted like this was a horrible idea. Personally, I think it's a great idea and one that I've had for a while as stated in previous blogs. The federal gas tax hasn't moved for 20+ years and if we were to increase that tax it would pay for infrastructure maintenance and also force us off oil sooner, both good things.
This is also the same congressman that says we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. How can he say that? Of course we have a spending problem, but the last time I checked we were balanced before the Bush tax cuts. Common sense tells you we're going to have to get back to that point to get balanced again. Republicans came in on the ticket in the mid-term elections that they were going to cut $100 billion from the budget. $100 billion? Is that a joke or something? Even if they got their way, that doesn't even come close to making up the deficit, which stands at $1.4 trillion and change. With their suggestions it would only be $1.3 trillion? Really? Is that something to brag about? They're willing to cut everything but the military, so in essence they're not really serious at all about cutting the deficit. They don't want to raise taxes, nor do they want to cut the military budget. Do they have their heads in the sand about this? Now, granted, Senator Ryan has a plan for entitlement reform which would save a ton of money but it would also end up costing seniors a lot more than what they're used to. And it does nothing to raise taxes, which is what's really needed. And democrats only want to raise taxes on the rich when in reality all the Bush tax cuts are going to have to be repealed for us to even have a chance at balancing the budget.
It's in Americans' blood to hate taxes, but unfortunately that's what it's going to take to get us out of the hole. You can only cut so much, and a lot of what's being cut is programs for the poor. Meanwhile, we continue to give huge tax breaks to the rich and corporations. It'll be interesting to see if any Republican nominee for the president has the brass to say we're actually going to need to raise taxes. I highly doubt it, but at least they would be being honest if they were to say that. You simply can't cut $1.4 trillion from the budget without hurting everyone but the wealthy. I'm tired of all the tax breaks we give to the wealthy and corporations and then turn around and cut programs to the poor. It's simply immoral.
2 comments:
Hoping for high gas prices to change our oil habits would also seriously affect the poor and elderly bro. It's a double edged sword.
True, and I've mentioned before how I lament the fact that higher gas prices disproportionately affect the poor. However, desperation leads to innovation in this area also as people are starting to car pool more and take public transportation more too. Ideally we'll make better use of public transportation as a respone to higher gas prices and that way the poor would have a more sustainable way to get around at a cheaper price than operating a motor vehicle, even if gas was cheaper. I think of a place like San Francisco that has public transportation that has zero carbon emissions and makes everything in the city easily accessible. Or European countries that have really good public transportation that is subsidized so everyone can get places easily. I would much rather us subsidize public transportation and give discounts to the poor and elderly rather than subsidize oil companies.
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