I am proud of Obama for standing up against McCain's latest ineffectual pander.

Just like McCain's absurd "gas tax holiday" proposal (which all economists agree would save Americans either nothing or $28 on average), McCain's recent proposal to open up America's coastal waters to offshore oil drilling operations (which is, to boot, a 180-degree flip-flop from his earlier position) is a shameless, useless sop to voters that assumes that Americans are too stupid or ill-informed to realize what crap it is (according to recent polls, Americans may indeed be just that stupid ill-informed).

Here is Obama on the latest McCain silliness:

Believe me -- if I thought that there was any evidence at all that drilling could save people money who are struggling to fill up their tanks by this summer or this year or even the next few years, I would consider it. But it won't. And John McCain knows that.

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McCain is at it again.  He is planning to resurrect the absurd "gas tax holiday" that he proposed back in March, which was so completely and unequivocally excoriated by every notable economist and commentator who could be reached for comment those many weeks ago.

As a refresher, here are my earlier posts on how ineffectual, wrong-headed and intellectually dishonest the whole proposition is.  Barack Obama has routinely spoken out and called this idea out for the shameless pandering that it is.

Here's the word out on McCain today:

John McCain is planning to resurrect his call for a national gas tax holiday, which became a staple of his stump speech in late April and early May.  A McCain aide told CNN's Dana Bash on Monday that the Arizona senator planned to plug the gas tax holiday in public statements throughout the day.

Along with Barack Obama, many economists largely dismissed the notion of a gas tax holiday as a political ruse that would do little to lower prices, but McCain has repeatedly said he does not believe the proposal would be a panacea for America's energy woes.

Instead, McCain argued, low-income families could save some extra cash to pay for their children's school supplies this fall, or perhaps treat themselves to a nice dinner.

Most economists have estimated that a gas tax holiday would save Americans nothing at the pump, because retailers would simply raise their prices to compensate.  Even if we took McCain at his word that it would save some money, it would only save the average consumer $25-30!

Great, by that logic, how about a $25 gift card to Office Depot (you know, for the school supplies) or McDonald's (for the "nice dinner" that $25 can buy a family of four)?

At least that way we could waste the same amount of money giving out worthless freebies to people without depleting the state infrastructure renewal funds that are funded by the federal gas tax.

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As most of us know, Senator Obama backed a gas tax holiday for Illinois drivers back in 2000. But his story is that he learned his lesson, that the plan was a complete failure:

. . . Obama voted for the temporary lifting of the tax three times in the state Senate. The tax holiday was finally approved during a special session in June of 2000, when Illinois motorists were furious that gas prices had just topped $2 a gallon in Chicago. The moratorium lifted the state's 5 percent sales tax on gasoline through the end of 2000.

Obama told constituents that gasoline prices would drop: "Gas retailers must post on each pump a statement that indicates that the state tax has been suspended and that this temporary elimination of the tax should be reflected in the price per gallon of gas." . . .

Now, running for president, Obama says the tax reduction was a complete failure, and that "the oil companies, the retailers" ended up benefiting most because they raised prices by the entire amount of the tax cut.

"I voted for it, and then six months later we took a look, and consumers had not benefited at all," Obama said. Having learned this hard economics lesson from his Illinois "mistake," Obama now argues that a federal tax holiday also will fail for the same reason -- the oil companies will take it all.

Is anyone going to challenge Obama to put up or shut up regarging his Illini gas tax comments? Because those final two quotes just ain't true. Actually, lifting the Illinois gas tax was mostly a success:

In fact, the only scientific study done on the pass-through of the tax holiday savings to Illinois consumers (and those in Indiana, as well, whose citizens enjoyed a similar holiday) found that it actually worked to a large extent.

The study is titled "$2.00 Gas! Studying the Effects of a Gas Tax Moratorium," by Joseph J. Doyle Jr. and Krislert Samphantharak. Download the PDF here. The authors concluded that "the suspension of the 5% sales tax led to decreases in retail prices of 3% compared to neighboring states. And when the tax was reinstated, retail prices rose by roughly 4%."

This suggests that the tax holiday delivered at least 60 percent of the tax savings to motorists.

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Does anyone else need a reason to oppose the McCain-Clinton Gas Tax Holiday political gimmick?
Well, 200 plus of the nation's top economists have signed a blog denouncing the very bad idea.
http://gastax08.blogspot.com/
Need I say more in this diary?

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The problem with Hillary Clinton's gas tax proposal is that it doesn't go far enough.

#1 YES! Axe the gas tax on consumers!

#2 YES! Slap a big windfall profits tax on the oil companies to make up for #1!

But that won't get the job done, if part of the job is to cut gas prices by roughly the amount of the gas tax. As Naomi Prins and many others have written:

The gas-tax holiday proposal would only work if gas companies were not allowed to pocket that 18.4 cent difference by increasing pump prices anyway, to somewhere just below an 18.4 cent rise - which would leave the total price almost the same. Somehow, trusting and gas companies don't quite fit together.

The oil companies will transfer their tax onto consumers unless . . .

#3 YES! The government must drop the price of gasoline 18 cents and price control it from there (based on the OPEC price of gas)!

What's wrong with the two Democrats is that neither can think sufficiently outside the box of the right-wing economics to offer us any sort of real solution to skyrocketing gasoline prices. As usual, once again Obama is worse (more neoliberal, more 'no alternative to the market', (and consequently) more attractive to corporate opinion leaders) than Clinton, but Clinton on this issue hasn't freed herself from neoliberal, neoclassical, 'mainstream' economics enough to offer a coherent policy proposal, one that will do what she says it will do.

But who can blame her, economics for the rest of us is abjectly 'out of ideas'. Here's the earnest Lori asking big Mainstream Economist Man at MSNBC's neoauthoritative 'Answer Desk' about maybe the government exerting some direct control over prices:

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