Can you say 136%? That’s how much Barack Obama has just proposed raising the tax on every barrel of oil produced in the U.S. In flat numbers the increase is $10 a barrel.
If adding this burden to economy at a time when growth is so slow that many economists are predicting we are on the verge of another recession seems ill-advised, it seems more so when you consider the words of a politician who warned that making fuel more expensive harms the average joe the most. The name of that politician is Barack Obama.
Obama told Georgetown University students in a 2011 speech that “rising prices at the pump affect everybody -– workers, farmers, truck drivers, restaurant owners, students who are lucky enough to have a car.”
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Five years down the road, Obama is proposing a 30% tax on each U.S. barrel of oil — since oil is hovering around $30 per barrel. What’s interesting is that in 2011, Obama himself said a $10 rise in oil prices translated to a 25-cent rise in gasoline prices.
By his own logic, he just imposed proposed imposing a 25-cent gas tax.
The current federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon. So, if Obama’s logic holds, he just increased proposed increasing the federal gas tax to 43.4 cents per gallon, a 136% increase.
But that’s only the federal gas tax. When state gas taxes are included, Americans are saddled with a 70-cent tax on every gallon of gas. When state and federal gas taxes are taken together, Obama’s oil tax would be a 56% increase.
“Businesses see rising prices at the pump hurt their bottom line,” Obama warned in 2011. “Families feel the pinch when they fill up their tank. And for Americans that are already struggling to get by, a hike in gas prices really makes their lives that much harder. It hurts.”
Obama wants to tax oil production to pay for green transportation programs, which he is spinning as a second stimulus program. The White House says its plan would increase spending on green transportation by $20 billion, and it would spend $2 billion on green vehicle and aircraft research and $400 million to make sure this green fleet is safely integrated into America’s transportation system.
This report, by Michael Bastasch, was cross-posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
