Blumenauer Says Gas Tax Holiday DOA

Oregonian reporter Jeff Mapes says despite all the hype surrounding the gas tax holiday that Hillary Clinton and John McCain are pushing on the campaign trail, it's never going to happen.

From Mapes' blog:

Or so says Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and a member of House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over taxes. Blumenauer is not an unbiased source, being that he doesn't think much of the idea anyway and he's a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. - the one presidential candidate opposed to the idea.

"The good news is it won't happen," he told me over the phone today. "I think it's a non-starter in terms of it being enacted."

The big hangup in Congress is that no one wants to give up the $3 billion a month the gas tax brings into the highway trust fund, he said. The fund is already going into the red, he said, and members are besieged with demands for more projects than they can approve already.

"What's Ted Kulongoski's No. 1 or No. 2 priority?" he asked of the Oregon governor. "I think it's getting more money into the highway trust fund." If the fund loses more money, Blumenauer points out, the feds will have to cut back on projects, reducing the number of construction jobs and exacerbating the recession.

So the big Gas Tax Holiday of 2008, promised by the politicians, turns out to be all show and no go. Voters will be shocked, shocked I tell you, when they discover another empty promise -- or just plain bad idea -- has been pimped on the campaign trail and in the media.