Advocating a break for the “less-than-average” American wage earners

Well, it seems as though everybody is doing it; discussing the already-upon-us general portion of the presidential election. The presidential general elections, like heat waves, used to spare us until a bit later in the season. But here it is, with not quite two weeks till the first day of spring, and already the thermometer has flirted with 100 degrees. And, unlike presidential campaigns past, now that the Democrats have settled on a nominee-even though it is not the one many thought it would be-what promises to be a bruising battle, a slobber knocker, to quote the “rasslers”, is in the offing. That means that “it’s on!” And the really scary part? The nominating conventions are still more that two months away. (The Democrats in Denver in the last month of August, and the Republicans in Minneapolis/Saint Paul in the first week of September. Get yer TIVO’s ready!)

Speaking of the recent battle for the nominations of the two major parties, one idea that both the GOP nominee, Senator John McCain, and the one-time contender for the Democrats, Senator Hillary Clinton, both came up with was the so-called “gas tax holiday”. The idea was to drop the federal gas tax for the summer period, that is, from Memorial Day till Labor Day. Unfortunately, the idea was not without its critics. First of all, because gas tanks hold only an average of 13 gallons, the savings for a fill-up at the time the idea was broached would have been a paltry $2.35 cents. That ain’t enough to do much with. Well, that, and the idea that the federal government would have been minus some $10 billion dollars from the lost revenue over the same period sort of took the air right out of that balloon.

Not that it means that this idea had no merit. It did. Allow me to elucidate. (Lemme explain!) On the CBS Evening News, with Katie Couric, a reporter did a piece detailing the effects of $4.00 a gallon gas on the nation’s economy. In that piece, it was revealed that in the South, where gas goes for a little less than the national average, $3.90 a gallon, to be exact, because that region’s average yearly income was smaller than the national average ($35,000 a year for the average Southern wage earner, give or take a thousand to account for my poor memory), gas prices there take up to 15 percent of that average wage earner’s income. By contrast, in a region that must have been invented right there in the CBS news room, called the Coasts (California, New York, and the wealthier New England states), where the average yearly income was a whopping $50,000 a year, the gas there, which coasts right at the national average of $4.00 a gallon, took only 4 percent of this region’s average income earner.

Okay, we get it. The more money you earn, the less trouble you have paying the higher prices for gas. Duh! Well, the whole idea is simple enough. Everything quoted thus far has been the “average” figure. And, if I remember what “average” is, it is the figure right in the middle. In the South, for example, half of the people should earn more than $35,000 a year, and half less than this amount. Obviously, those who earn even less than the average, would be paying a higher percentage of their income for fuel. And for that mythical region called the Coasts, those lucky enough to be earning higher than $50,000 a year, see even less than the average 4 percent of their income go for fuel, whilst those who earn less than the average… . Well, you know the story. If you got enough dough, you can make bread, or something or other like that. Anyway, if you do have the dough, keep me in mind, because I might knead you one day.

On to the crux of my essay. Now, mind you, I won’t be the first op-ed writer to do so, but I’m about to make a suggestion. This will not go down in history. If, on the other hand, by some great accident, someone in authority actually took my suggestion at face value and adopted it, well then you might call up Guinness. (BTW, if you are a Member of Congress, pay attention. Legislative action just might be required of you.) Because those of us who earn less than the national average do pay a higher percentage of our income to fuel our cars, and because those of us who live in rural areas have to drive longer distances to our work, why not resurrect the idea of the gas-tax holiday for lower-income individuals. After all, the man who had the idea originally, John McCain, said “It gives low-income Americans -- who drive further with older automobiles and are bearing the brunt of this -- a little bit of a break for the summer." (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/29/campaign.wrap/)

And let us likewise take a page from the playbook of Senator Hillary Clinton, who, had her version of the gas-tax holiday been adopted, would have allowed Exxon Mobile, et al, those corporations who are resetting those record profits that just last year were the highest “in the entire history of forever” (Spongebob Squarepants-“The Magic Conch”)., the honor of making up the difference in the Fed’s pocketbook.

Finally, I would like to say that I am not one to say, “I told you so” to advocates of the Iraqi war, but… . On Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show, Countdown, it was revealed that Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corp. (parent company of Faux, er, Fox News) enthusiastically predicted before the war that, because of it, oil could be bought for $20 a barrel. According to ol’ Rupert, this would be better than any old tax cut. Oops! Oil, on Friday, got to $140 a barrel, before dropping back on Monday to $134 a barrel. So, he ain’t Kreskin!

Well, the Iraqis were supposed to greet us as liberators, too, and there was that bit about the “rose petal-strewn parade”, but the Iraqis probably didn’t get the memo on those. Still, it could be worse. After all, we could have two presidential candidates in the U. S. trying to explain their vote on the resolution that led us into this war in the first place.