Arrooooo, I was watching the big talking screen today and saw that John McCain and Hillary McClinton want to have a federal gas tax holiday where they repeal the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon for 15 weeks during summer. Sounds great. 20 cents less per gallon at the pump. While at first I was all in favor of mom and dad having some extra bucks in their pocket since that could very well mean more biscuits for me. I did some thinking about what it really meant. Dad helped me out with the math on this one..

The average American drives 15,000 miles per year.
A low MPG estimate is 15 miles per gallon. Most cars do much better than this.
The gas tax holiday will run from Memorial Day though Labor Day. A little less than 15 weeks. We will use 15 weeks for this example….

• 15,000 miles per year divided by 52 weeks in a year gives you 288 miles per week. This would be about 20 miles to work each way, 5 days a week.. with a few extra miles per week for other travel…
• 288 miles per week multiplied by 15 gives you 4327 miles driven during the gas tax holiday.
• 4327 miles driven divided by 15 miles per gallon gives you 288 gallons of gas purchased during the federal gas tax holiday.
• 288 gallons of gas purchased multiplied by .184 (18.4 cents per gallon) gives you $52.99

So, the average American will save a whopping $52.99 during the 15 week federal gas tax holiday…. That could buy a lot of biscuits and/or chew toys. But at what cost?

I saw John McCain on CNN this morning bashing Barack Obama saying he was out of touch with lower class Americans. McCain went on to say that this federal gas tax holiday will allow poor people to go out for a nice meal… or buy their kids a toy… He forgot to mention buying their dogs some extra biscuits.. He also forgot to mention that the gas you are going to need to buy in order to go buy that toy or get to the nice restaurant is going to offset the actual amount you can spend… shame on him! Dad said that McCain’s comments seemed rather condescending and elitist.

Hillary is also bashing Barack Obama saying he is out of touch and he doesn’t understand lower class Americans. Hillary needs to stop playing politics and actually do some math herself. Dad said he would be happy to help her if Bill was too busy with the interns…. I’m not really sure what that meant.

Dad and I tend to agree with Barack Obama on this. He knows that this federal gas tax holiday is going to provide the average American $53 or…. $3.53 per week… or 50 cents per day…. and has said as much..

At the same time, this federal gas tax holiday is going to cost the federal government billions in funding for highways essentially putting people out of work. Without money to fund highway and infrastructure development, you can’t pay people to do the work.. so.. lets take $10 billion dollars out of the economy and give it the average American so we can get an extra gallon of gas a week for 15 weeks and drive an extra 20 miles each week. Sounds good to me.. what’s another $10 billion dollars going into the pockets of big oil companies.. I mean heck.. they have only been making record profits quarter after quarter after quarter.. lets give em some more..

Now.. none of the candidates.. or people pushing for this federal gas tax holiday have even bothered to mention how the oil companies are going to keep raising the prices during this federal gas tax holiday.. so come September.. when they reinstate the federal gas tax.. you are not going to be paying 18 cents more per gallon… you are going to be paying 36 cents more per gallon…

Where do I come up with this number? Hmmm… According to Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government
the average gas price in the us as of 4/14/2008 was $3.389… this was up 63 cents from 4/14/2007 which is a total rise in cost of 63.2 cents.. or.. 1.2 cents per week… So, during the 15 week federal gas tax holiday… prices could reasonably rise 1.2 cents per week.. or a total of 18 cents…

So, Make no bones about the federal gas tax holiday. When labor day comes around, you will be working even harder to fill your tank and instead of saving $3 per week.. you will be paying out an extra $6 per week. Tell your favorite candidate that instead of a lame attempt at trying to get more votes.. they actually need to do something to help cut the rising cost of gas or better yet… VOTE BASSET!

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