EDITORIAL Dole's tax relief

The oil and gas industry has reason to cheer Bob Dole's decisions last week to resign from the Senate and quit trying to make political dollars out of a penny-ante gasoline tax. The tax gambit flushed out too much nonsense over energy policy and fuel prices and raised questions about the Kansas lawmaker's sense of perspective.

May 20, 1996

4 min read

Dole's proposal to suspend the Clinton administration's 4.3/gal federal gasoline tax hike, for example, inspired news anchor Dan Rather to wade in over his head last week on CBS radio. The measure, Rather noted, has support of the oil industry, which along with the telephone and television cable industries makes large political donations. Then he opined that the resulting suasion not only improved chances for repeal of the fuel-tax hike but also ensured that gasoline prices would increase along with telephone and TV cable rates.

Hello? Anyone perplexed by Rather's linking of gasoline prices to the regulated telephone and TV cable rates should not feel alone. This type of thing happens when political newsmakers stretch a point.

Tax and energy policy

Earlier, former Energy Sec. James Schlesinger told a Senate committee that repeal of the fuel levy might serve some U.S. interests but would be poor energy policy. As an energy analyst, Schlesinger certainly deserves more regard than, say, hurried news celebrities reading scripts written by anonymous others. Before lawmakers begin assessing energy policy as a function of tax bite, however, they should remember who implemented the statist energy plan of the Carter administration. Maybe Schlesinger was just waxing nostalgic over the type of imperious governance that American voters now reject at every opportunity.

What the oil and gas industry should fear is that someone might actually try to make policy out of the notions that fuel prices relate to political donations or that U.S. energy interests suffer when motorists surrender less of their money to government. For 4.3/gal, it's hardly worth the risk.

Dole addressed the wrong problem when he unleashed these demons. What the Clinton administration wanted from fuel consumers early in its first term was not 4.3/gal of gasoline but 50/gal. Congressional Democrats passed the smaller levy as a consolation tithe to a President who wasn't governing the way he had campaigned. In the next election they became the minority party anyway. By legislatively jousting with them over 4.3/gal, Dole was just setting himself up to have to explain why the dragon he hoped to slay looked so much like a lizard.

Capitol Hill isn't where presidential contests are won or lost. The votes are out where Americans work, play, raise their babies, and burn hydrocarbons for help with their exertions. Out there, 50/gal means roughly 10 times more than the token over which Dole was devoting so much political energy and rousing so many energy policy hobgoblins. If he wants to distinguish himself from Clinton, he should remind people of what the President-urged on by his hyper-environmentalist Vice-President-wanted to do to them with fuel taxes, not what he settled for.

Cramped scope

Dole was right last week to conclude that the legislative process provided cramped scope for the full ideological battle that ought to be waged-if, indeed, he intends to wage it. With Vice-President Al Gore constitutionally peeking over his shoulder in the Senate, Dole could hardly call the 50/gal tax proposal the dumb idea that it was-if that, indeed, is what he thinks-and still expect to move legislation.

So does the Republican challenger think it wrong to make fuel consumers render financial sacrifice to environmental hypotheses and bureaucratic judgments about energy use? All he proposed was repeal of the Clinton levy in a period of elevated gasoline prices. His answer to the larger question would tell much about energy policy in a Dole presidency. The industry should demand it.