Greenwire quotes Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus as follows, speaking after the minority’s tax package survived cloture with 61 senators voting to cut off debate ensuring it will be added to their “energy [sic] bill”:
“We Americans are pretty easy and soft compared to other countries on how much we tax oil and gas revenues,” Baucus said.
Sen. Baucus either believes that increasing taxation of petroleum producers would not effect supply or price, or he has decided that this is simply the most clever way to get to the Left’s long-desired increase in the cost of gasoline…so long as the increase isn’t going to the people who make or sell it (e.g., notice how $3.00 a gallon is an outrage to the greens in the US, but their EU offices have no complaint with $7.00 gas there; the difference? The State gets the money).
This may strike some as odd, coming as it does on the heels of shrill charges agaisnt President for high costs at the pump for the very people supporting such provisions and the recent “anti-gouging” amendment, one step in the bizarre dance Congressional Democrats have been offering of “we use too much energy…and I’d better not see you raising the price!”
So, I helpfully provide a continuum of retail gasoline prices and invite Mr. Baucus to tell us precisely where on that spectrum US prices ought fall, courtesy of the Energy Information Administration.
Of course, he is also free to tell us that producers don’t pass along increases in the cost of production – like his tax hike – to consumers.