McCain response to the gas tax holiday petition
Erik Blachford | July 14, 2008
Form letter sticks up for gas tax holiday, plugs renewables and drilling.
You may recall that earlier this summer we asked TerraPass newsletter subscribers and their friends to join a petition against the “gas tax holiday” proposed by Senators McCain and Clinton. The holiday never came to pass, good news for both the federal agencies supported by the revenue from the tax and for the environment, given that now is pretty much exactly the wrong time to offer incentives that lead to more driving.
This week I received an email from Senator McCain’s office, presumably in response to the various times I went up to his website to upload our petition and signatories (over 3,000 people signed on by Memorial Day weekend). It’s a form letter response, which I’ve included below. Much of it I disagree with, starting of course with his campaign’s ongoing defense of the gas tax holiday, and continuing through the suggestion that the solution to our energy woes is to drill for more oil.
But at least his office is taking the issue seriously enough to respond to those of us writing in with concerns about the environment, energy policy and gas prices (well, mostly gas prices). And surely there is something encouraging about reading a call for increased energy from renewable sources in this kind of form letter. This sentiment is clearly in the mainstream now.
It ain’t much, but any time I get an indication that our presidential aspirants care about the climate change vote, I’m at least encouraged to keep up my political outreach. I hope you are too.
Dear Mr. Blachford:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the high price of gasoline and our nation’s oil reserves. I understand and share your concerns about the hardships that increasing energy costs are placing on consumers and all sectors of the economy.
Given the multiple factors contributing to high gasoline prices, I do not believe that there is a “quick fix” to effectively reverse the current trend. The key determinants of gasoline price are crude oil price, supply availability, refining capacity, and demand. Increasing supply or reducing demand are the only means of reducing crude oil prices over the long-term.
However, to provide even a small amount of relief during the summer months, I proposed spending the federal gas tax from Memorial Day until Labor Day. This gas tax “holiday” would have reduced prices for unleaded gas by 18 cents a gallon and 24 cents for a gallon of diesel fuel over the summer months when gas prices are historically at their highest. Unfortunately, the majority party was not willing to allow this proposal to receive a vote, despite the fact that gas prices continue to climb.
For the immediate future, we must break with the energy policies of the past and assure affordable fuel for America. This will require more domestic production, especially in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). As you may know, a board federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production of another 18 billion barrels of oil from the OCS. It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and put more of our own reserves to use, provided that such development is supported by local stakeholders and costal state governments and adhere to sensible standards of environmental protection.
Some believe that the U.S. should also pursue drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a controversial approach that’s promoted as a means of increasing supply and reducing our demand for foreign oil. There are several reasons that cause me to oppose ANWR development at this time. First, even the most reliable estimates conclude that the refuge could only meet about 2 to 5 percent of the nation’s oil needs at best. Additionally, most scientific analyses conclude that ANWR’s land and wildlife, which support approximately 270 different types of mammals, birds, and fresh water fish, would be impacted adversely by development.
Other actions, such as investing in transportation infrastructure that runs on better, more efficient forms of renewable, non-polluting fuels sources would substantially decrease our nation’s dependence on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and we should aggressively pursue them. I believe it’s possible to maintain a balance to ensure adequate energy supplies meet the growing demand of the American people.
Finally, reform of the oil futures market is necessary. We must purge the market of the reckless speculation, unrelated to any kind of productive commerce that has inflated the price of gasoline — at the expense of working men and women across our country. With new regulations, we can better ensure integrity in oil-futures trading and protect the public interest.
Again, thank you for sharing your views with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future on issues of concern
Sincerely,
John McCain
United States Senator
3000? how many people come to terra-pass or get the newsletters? This number dissapoints me more than the gas tax holiday proposal itself.
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Two issues seem to be involved: first, greener energy use, and second, short term major hardships related to an unexpected, sudden major rise in gas prices.
McCain certainly does not appear to view a gas tax holiday as a long term solution but a good short term "break" to give people some time to adjust to a change that has caused severe economic hardship. That's one of the functions of government. We don't really want to make the conservation movement seem cruel or heartless, or associate it with an uncaring response to sudden hardship -- quite the reverse. If more people do not want something like this to happen again, if they can be shown how past overconsumption has helped cause it, and they can be given good reasons for why preventive measures are a good solution, they are probably more likely to support long-term energy sustainability and renewable energy (and to pay for it).
I thought the positions outlined in the letter were well thought out and rational. It's OK to promise people anything, but it is probably not realistic to think we can just "talk our way out" of a crisis, or offer proposed changes largely based on wishful thinking and rhetoric, as some politicians seem to think. Many letters have to be written by political staffers, who are concerned with grammatical correctness to minimize the chances of misquoting them later and who must take a fairly consistent response to many subtly different questions, so they seem like form letters.
BTW I am not associated with the campaign of any of the candidates.
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Problem with the tax "holiday" is that saving 18 cents/gal while gas is jumping 50+ cents is nothing to the amount of revenue and lost jobs the short fall will create. That and the fact that realistcally the demand will swallow that savings up. The prices are set that high not because of the tax or the price of oil but because people will pay it. The price of gas per gal will not change because we remove the tax, but will jump 25-50 cents/gal once the "holiday" is over. The price is set by the oil companies and the amount they think they can get before Americans revolt and change their driving habits. If the US gov. subsidized the oil, it would still be 4.40/gal because people are still lining up at the pump. Once they got over the 4/gal mark, it shot up 5-10 cents a week. It's all psychological, if people will pay, the price will rise.
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Erik, please. This idea does nothing to save the environment pass or fail.
The idea behind a Gas Tax Holiday is not to "offer incentives that lead to more driving.", but to help take some of the sting out of the driving that most Americans rely on for their lives and livelihoods to go on.
A significant number of Americans would not begin logging lots of extra miles simply because a few cents per gallon of taxes were shaved off a gallon of fuel. Fuel remains a massive burden still.
I don't understand this mentality of "you irresponsible American people need to change your driving habits."
Please try to remain aware that only a small percentage of the American population lives in an urban environment where it's possible to take public transportation or ride a bike to work, school, etc.
The majority of Americans rely heavily on transportation. It's what drives our economy from the ground up.
For instance, the milk in your low-fat latte starts out in an alfalfa field which must be harvested and transported before being fed to dairy cows that produce raw milk that is again transported to be processed into a wide array of dairy products that are transported multiple times again before ending up in your coffee cup. (hopefully the dairy cows live on a farm with a methane digester). ALL of the related transportation costs are double what they were last year, which is driving all related costs up.
No one can afford extra driving. Few would celebrate a request for the government to tighten its belt for once by engaging in environmentally irresponsible driving.
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If you contact any of your representatives, you will find that correspondence runs 10 to 1 in favor of increasing drilling. The ignorance about the scope of our petro-addiction, and limited ability to fix the problem by drilling is as astounding as it is depressing. My faith in both our politicians and "citizens" has been taken down a few notches with this knee-jerk reaction to what has been a known and increasing problem for the last 35 years.
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Erik, I hate to rain on your parade, but what does this form letter prove? I write to elected representatives all the time and often get something like the letter you depicted - a letter that is clearly cut-and-paste material with no regard to your letter, other than the fact that it was about energy policy.
I would hope that a petition of several thousand signatures can get more attention from the McCain campaign than that! I'm not sure which I'm more disappointed by: your low expectations or McCain's response.
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The best argument against drilling in Anwar and the OCS is that we need to save the oil for our grandchildren.
One cannot argue with such a true statement.....
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