Pumped Up
Do oil and politics mix? As the price of gas tops $3 a gallon, Politicians from the White House on down are hoping they do
Desperate to show that they feel the citizenry's pain at the gas pump, politicians battled last week to don the mantle of Robin Hood. Leaders of both parties took turns pledging to dispatch the IRS to slap around the oil companies--take away tax breaks, hit them with a windfall-profits tax, and even haul them in for a good audit. Democrats proposed a summer holiday from the federal gasoline tax while Republicans favored simply mailing out $100 rebate checks.
Certainly no one expects a handout from Uncle Sam to turn back the clock on rising gas prices, which topped $3 a gallon in many places last week. But it wouldn't even go far as a feel-good measure, with the typical two-car family on track to spend at least $1,260 more to drive this year than it did five years ago. Subtracting the 18.4-cent federal tax from the pump price would only put prices back to where they were two weeks ago. Still, alarm bells were ringing all over Washington, with average gas prices up 30 percent from a year ago and nearing the all-time high after Hurricane Katrina.
No excuses. "This is not something that is disconnected from the voters, or obscure to them, or something that tangentially affects them," says GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio. "This is something they pay every week or several times a week."
Pity the poor politicians. There's nothing the federal government can do in the short term about a global imbalance in oil supply and demand, the nuclear ambitions of an oil-rich Iran, and a shortage of U.S. gasoline refining capacity. "It's like the weather," says Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens. "There's a lot said about it, but there's not anything you can do about it. There's nothin' the government can do." But poll-watchers know that average American voters aren't interested in excuses. In a survey that bodes ill for any incumbent, pollster Daniel Yankelovich found that 85 percent of Americans believe the government could do something about oil prices if it tried. Yankelovich wrote in Foreign Affairs that energy has become a classic "tipping point" issue, where an overwhelming majority is concerned, with unease intense and a widespread belief that government could be doing far more.
In suburban Philadelphia, Democrat Lois Murphy has been working the voters right at the gas stations in her bid to unseat vulnerable GOP Rep. Jim Gerlach. "It was really quite educational," she says. "People were spending $75 to fill up their trucks. People were very angry, very frustrated, very concerned. People volunteered that they were looking for a change in Congress." Gerlach, for his part, was calling for tough scrutiny of the oil industry, a suspension of the federal gas tax, and "serious measures" in short order. "Congress needs to make it a front-burner issue," he says. Murphy noted, however, that her opponent has taken campaign funds from the oil and gas industry--putting her finger on a sore spot for the entire Republican Party. The Center for Responsive Politics found that Big Oil contributions are more lopsided this year than ever before in 16 years of tracking, with 84 percent of industry dollars flowing to the GOP.
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