The Intersection

Have an utterly misguided, crazy, pointless, disappointing holiday

Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute calls it a "holiday from reality." Max Schulz of the Manhattan Institute calls the gas tax holiday backed by presidential hopefuls and U.S. senators John McCain of Arizona and Hillary Clinton of New York "bad policy and political gimmickry." Ken Green, an energy expert with the American Enterprise Institute says the holiday shifts the tax burden so it's "less at the pump and more in your tax bill." The Clinton administration's Undersecretary of Commerce Robert Shapiro calls the proposal "utterly misguided." Energy analyst Bob Sussman of the Center of American Progress, who is backing Obama, calls the holiday "a small break to everybody instead of a significant break to the people pinched." Roger Tauss, international vice president of the Transport Workers' Union which also endorses Obama, calls the holiday "crazy" and "typical Beltway crap."

Sam Stein of the Huffington Post compiled these reactions on April 30. His article also included two writers for the New York Times, Paul Krugman and Tom Friedman, who called the plan "pointless," "disappointing," and "ridiculous," and Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, who says it is "an idea that could actually aid the terrorists." On May 5, Yael T. Abouhalkah of the Kansas City Star's editorial board summed up the criticism with the observation that triggering a highway funding shortfall could cause lay-offs for thousands in construction and material supplies, adding Clinton's proposal to fund the gap with a windfall tax on oil companies stands no chance of passage. Robert Poole of Reason.com, who calls the consumer savings "trivial," says a shortfall for the 2009 highway budget approaching $3 billion, and adds the holiday could spur an additional shortfall of $8 to $10 billion.