Lynne Kiesling
By now you all have probably heard that Hillary Clinton and John McCain are proposing gasoline tax holidays this summer to take some budget pressure off of voters who drive a lot (c'mon, let's be honest about the true audience of these proposals). Barack Obama does not support such a proposal.
Criticizing this proposal is truly like shooting fish in a barrel, and others have done it more thoroughly and eloquently than I can (thanks to the WSJ's Environmental Capital for the link).
So will the populist impetus take the day on this issue, or will there be room for reasoned economic analysis to convince voters that this is a stupid policy? Depends on who they are and how much they drive, probably.
Some other good piling on:
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/126252.html
"Don't both senators support imposing a cap-and-trade market on carbon emissions to combat man-made global warming? In a Washington Post op/ed last year, two RAND researchers calculated that a relatively modest $30 per ton of carbon price would boost gasoline prices by 35 cents per gallon." The federal gas tax is 18 cents/gallon.
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/04/bad-news-for-pigou-club.html
"Burman and Toder are saying that the short-run supply curve is almost inelastic, so the welfare gain from the tax cut falls almost entirely on producers rather than consumers."
Another,
http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/blog/_archives/2008/4/29/3667011.html