Bush: Gas Prices ‘Tax On Working People’
Yeah, it’s a tax on non-working people too. I don’t care which party you belong to, if ANY candidate tells you they WILL lower gas prices, their LYING. THE ONLY ones that can lower gas prices are the gas companies themselves, by building MORE oil refineries. (Until some alternative fuel comes along) You think the liberals will let that happen? Oh NO, because it would interfere with the breeding habitats of the deer tick or some crap like that. LOOK, if we are EVER going to pay less for gasoline, we are going to have to stick it back to the oil companies. Rather then going grocery shopping every other day, I have decided to go once a week. With my big 8 cylinder pick up, I’m sure it will be just like tossing a lounge chair off the bow of a cruse ship. Yeah, they won’t miss it, but it sure will help me.
Imagine if we all did that?
“No question rising gasoline prices are like a tax on our working people,” President Bush said today, blaming the problem on American dependency on foreign oil.
And no question, he said, “We are not in a recession.”
He also accused his party’s rival candidates of campaigning with pledges “to tax the rich.”
Bush made his remarks in New Orleans, at a joint press conference with the leaders of Mexico and Canada during a two-day hemispheric summit.
Bush was asked if rising gas prices will not “erase or certainly erode the benefit” of the Economic Stimulus Act which he pushed and which Congress approved - with billions of dollars in tax rebates promised for American households in May. And he was asked “how deep and how long” the recession will be.
“I’m obviously concerned for our consumers,” Bush said. “All the more reason to have passed a rebate, tax relief. And all the more reason for the United States Congress to keep the tax relief I passed permanent. We got people out there campaigning, “well, we’re just going to tax the rich.”
“You can’t raise enough money to meet their spending appetites by taxing the so-called rich,” the president said. “Every one of those so-called ‘tax the rich’ schemes end up taxing the middle class families. And in a time of economic uncertainty we need tax certainty. In a time of rising gasoline prices, we need to be sending a message to all Americans, we’re not going to raise your taxes.”
The president insists that congressional reluctance to explore vast new resources of domestic oil - notably in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - has exacerbated the problem of rising gas prices.
“What’s happening is, is that we’ve had an energy policy that neglected hydrocarbons in the United States for a long period of time, and now we’re paying the price,” Bush said. ” We should have been exploring for oil and gas in ANWR, for example. But, no, we made the decision — our Congress kept preventing us from opening up new areas to explore in environmentally friendly ways. And now we’re becoming, as a result, more and more dependent on foreign sources of oil.
“Fortunately, Canada and Mexico are our biggest providers, for which we are grateful,” he said standing alongside Canada’s Harper and Mexico’s Calderon, “But our energy policy is — wasn’t effective over the past decades, and now we’re paying the price.”
Bush was asked “how deep and how long” the economic recession will be in the United States.
“First of all… we’re not in a recession,” Bush said, “We’re in a slowdown. We grew in the fourth quarter of last year. We haven’t had first quarter growth statistics yet. But there’s no question we’re in a slowdown. And people are concerned about it, obviously. I’m — of all the three of us standing up here — I’m probably the most concerned about the slowdown. After all, it’s affecting the people who I have the honor of representing. ‘
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Well, they could abolish the various taxes on gas, oil, etc….
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:20 pmI’m getting tired of this false argument that there aren’t new refineries being built. Really, it is parsing words when you get down to it. There may not have been any new stand alone refineries built since the 80’s, but I guarantee you there have been plenty of “expansions”. I know, I have worked directly on two since 2005. They are for all intents and purposes new greenfield refineries, but since they tie into an existing refinery there must be some sort of exemption. I worked on a coker VDU that was built on the site of an old warehouse and admin building. Right now I am on a job that will double the output of the existing refinery, 325k barrels a day. If it was large enough to be considered a refinery at 325k, would it be safe to say that 650k is two refineries? I think so.
If you want cheaper gas, you need a stronger dollar.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:27 pmDRILL ANWR.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:38 pmHere is a picture which explains the problem.
http://bp0.blogger.com/_Q16GN8b2AzE/R8ajA_W19pI/AAAAAAAAAV8/ZTbvOVzkB4A/s1600-h/no%2Bzone.jpg
Didn’t Pelosi say she would lower prices before winning the 2006 election? Why yes she did …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5UYNX_XGQA
What happened?
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:55 pmFuckin drill that big ass oil deposit under north dakota or wherever it is. I still think we should switch to natural gas. Its an easy conversion and the US can supply it.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:55 pmI wish I had the link, but it should be easy to find; in any case, $0.30 gas in 1950 is the equivalent of $3.23 in 2008. The big contributor to the increase, after inflation, has been taxes that were only 1.5% in 1950.
Supply isn’t the real problem and I believe most of the refineries we do have are cut way back now, for maintenance (and expansion, as TedB pointed out).
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:58 pmTedB is right though I would argue with him about needing additional refining capacity being that I did that line of work in a former life.
You want cheaper gas? A few things can be done to help. Shit can the reformulated gas plan, reduce the gas tax, reduce demand by conserving, etc…
But the real culprit is a weak dollar - everyone’s hedging crude like they do gold. And Guido will be selling his futures short soon.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:53 pmHell, the far left isn’t really interested in alt. fuels. They’re interested in only one thing, obstructing progress of a great country. They won’t let us drill for oil, they won’t let us put up wind mills because it’ll interfere with bird migration, or in Kennedy’s case; fishing boats (a.k.a His diesel dumping yacht). They find problems with every fuckin’ solution we come up with. They thrive on bitching about America and how horrible they think it is.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:57 pmI was for alt. fuel, but now I think I’d rather just line California’s coast with big ugly oil rigs and guzzle up some good ol’ fashion “Texas Tea”.
The only reason gas prices are high now is because of the falling dollar. If politicians of any stripe wanted to relieve high gas prices, they would remove the federal and state taxes on gasoline at the pump. Filled up for 3.27 today before lunch(they went up 30 cents after Iunch). Without the tax of .46 cents in the state of Ohio, it would have been 2.81. If the dollar was like it was back in 2003, gasoline would be in the buck-fifty range and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:22 pm