Is this the best our legislators can come up with? $100 and open ANWR in 10 years? So they give every tax payer back $100 of their own money so it can then be given to the oil companies. This has to be the damndest example of indirect government subsidy to a business I’ve ever heard of, and an example of just how stupid and easily placated Americans are.
Oops times two. I thought I was still in the pit. Second oops: the last sentence should have read “…an example of just how stupid and easily placated they think Americans are.”
Mods: you can move the thread if you think it’s going to end up there anyway.
I’m stupid and easily placated, and I *still * think it sucks.
Yes. Because I’m damn certain at the end of the year I’m just going to have to send it back.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. Beyond dumb. Yes, let’s just put a bandaid on it rather than really examining the issue.
Things like these cause me to lose what’s left of my meagre faith in legislators.
This is a Repubican pitch, isn’t it? Tells you how dumb they think the general populace is.
Can anyone please explain to me why the GOP wouldn’t vote on Wyden’s proposal to stop providing tax relief to oil companies when oil is over $50/barrel? I only heard about it briefly on NPR this morning and when I searched their website I couldn’t find anything about it. Why do Republicans think it is a bad idea? Or what have I misunderstood?
Well, their income tax rebate bribe…err, “strategy” helped get W elected the first time, no? So there’s no real reason to abandon a method that works.
it is a terrible idea. I know there are people struggling with gas prices (thankfully, I don’t drive that much), but subsidizing oil consumption really only makes the problem worse.
Folks have got to realize that, over the long term, the alternative to high prices for gas are gas shortages, gas rationing, or no longer using vehicles that use gas. Any policy that doesn’t lead us to the latter is only making the problem worse.
It’s nuts. It would just drive up the deficit and mean that money is being directed from the treasury to the oil companies. Makes about as much sense as not letting Medicare negotiate with drug companies. Now of course they want to tie the stupid rebate with opening up the arctic reserves.
I think it’s stupid. $100 will cover the cost of gas for me for about a month or it would have been one car payment before my car is paid off. Alternatively, it’s the cost of a one-month bus pass with enough left over for about one monthly bus pass and a couple of one-week passes. It won’t do anything about it taking an hour longer to get to work by bus than it does if I drive myself.
I already drive a cheap, paid-off, fuel efficient car. While I wouldn’t mind an extra $100, as something intended to do something about the high cost of fuel, this is about as useful and efficient as spitting in the wind. 
People will get this money, buy gas with it, and end up subsidising… Albertans.
At least the Albertans are operating from a position of surplus…
Anything that does not work to lower the cost of oil in the long term will not work. We can either increase the supply of oil, or we can lower the demand.
Increasing the supply of oil: remove environmental regulations, open up protected lands to drilling.
Lowering the demand: Removing regulations that get in the way of providing alternative energy sources or providing financial grants for research thereof (such as reprocessing of nuclear bywastes), or providing financial means for exploring alternative transportation.
The $100 will at best have no effect, and at worst will increase the demand for more oil by removing the financial incentive for energy conservation, thereby raising prices.
The most effective solutions are either too controversial or too expensive or both. I think a more practical solution would be to provide tax rebate vouchers earmarked for items that conserve energy, such as cycling equipment or bus passes.
It’s an idiotic and transparent polictical ploy for legislators to suck up to their constituents. And it’s a perfect example of why I’m disgusted with politics in general. When faced with a problem, as usual, instead of trying to figure out a way of actually addressing the problem, their first kneejerk reaction is to think of a way that they personally can come out of it looking good. Politicians’ priorities are always me first, my party second, and the good of the people I’m supposed to be representing waaaay down around #14,832.
Yeah, I know - ineffective politicians? The devil you say! It’s nothing new, and people have been complaining about it since day one. But it still sucks, and occasionally it just pisses me the hell off.
It’s stupid. We should be increasing gas taxes, not subsidies.
I would be very interested in learning whether our members of Congress could pass the final exam of a basic freshamn macroeconomics class. Suppose we cut a hundred-dollar check to every tax-paying household. Then each household becomes one hundred dollars richer. Woohoo!
However, the government has become poor, by an amount of one hundred dollars per household. There are over one hundred million households, so we’ve upped the defiict by more than ten billion dollars. That puts upward pressue on interest rates and inflation. D’oh!
Now everyone seems to agree that the economy is sluggish right now precisely because of rising interest rates and inflation. Why choose this moment to do something that makes the problem worse? Perhaps the Congresscritters simply believe that adding a mere ten billion to a deficit that already exceeds four-hundred billion won’t have a significant effect. The problem is that lots of relatively small handouts add up to a relatively large handout. The only thing to do is to stop as many of the little handouts as possible.
I think it’s bloody brilliant. Combine a controversial measure (drilling in ANWR) with a proposal to give people money. If you vote against the measure, you vote against giving the people who vote for you $100 each. I can just see the negative campaign ads now.
Pure politics, regardless of what side of the aisle it originated on.
If there is 100,000,000 Americans (my rectally pulled number) that will get a $100 dollar check, don’t you think that most of that $100,000,000,000 will go right back to the oil companies? How about putting that money into alternative fuel research, instead of the pittance that Bubba Bush has thrown at it so far and has been so proud of.
I would gladly give up my $100 bucks for it, and I need that money pretty damn bad.
I hate to nit, but it would be $10,000,000,000. Only one zero, but a magnitude of ten difference.
Many people here are saying this would just subsidize the oil industry, but would this rebate be only usable for gas purchases?
I live 5 miles from work and I drive a hatchback. $100 would cover me for about three months of gas. I would take it, but I think it’s foolish. Pure politics. No effort to address the problem.
Whaddayamean, “our”? I didn’t vote for any of the clowns floating that stupid proposal.