Clinton [Sneakily] Introduces Windfall Profit Tax Bill

Don't be fooled by the sunshiney "tax holiday" language or her pandering to us beleaguered commoners who yearn for cheaper oil, if only our leaders would decree it.  The woefully misnomered "gas-tax holiday bill" is just the candy coating around Hillary's poison pill.  Or - if you prefer - the caramel coating around her poison apple.
 

The bill, which is to be co-sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), would essentially implement the break in the gas tax on consumers while imposing a tax on oil companies to make up for lost revenue. Hattaway said it is unclear when the bill would come up for a vote, but added that the goal is to have the policy in place in time for the summer driving season, which is traditionally viewed as opening on Memorial Day.

Happily...

There’s virtually no chance Congress will approve a gas tax holiday before then–or at all. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she, like Sen. Barack Obama, does not support the moratorium.

So we can take solace in the fact that this official business she's bringing before the U.S. Senate is just a feckless gambit in her Presidential campaign.  Which is nice.  A wholly inappropriate use of her office, yes, but nicer than the prospect of windfall profit taxes actually being enacted.

Hillary's been upping her oil company trash talk lately, too.  In her  two-night  O'Reilly Factor interview this week, she said:

"Unless we tax the oil companies, they will reap huge and undeserved windfall profits."

Ah... no, wait.  That was Jimmy Carter, shortly before the enactment of the 1980 windfall profit tax (a gross misnomer in itself, as it's actually a simple excise tax), which had the very predictable consequences of driving down production levels, lowering supply, and increasing prices.  It also yielded $300 billion less in revenues than had been forecasted (likely because the forecasters of record shared Senator Clinton's impressively fleeting grasp of tax policy that blithely ignores the effect of major behavioral incentives, including punishing those who engage in the refinement and distribution of petroleum products)).  But that relatively straightforward relationship between taxing oil production and forcing supply down and prices up doesn't hold a candle to the stump value of beating up on a perceived enemy, in this case, the evil oil companies, who reap "huge and undeserved" profits.

Back to Hillary's Fox News interview.  What she actually said was:

In the short term, I do want a gas tax holiday, but to pay for it by putting a windfall profits tax on the oil companies. ... Now look, what it means is that the oil companies have made out like bandits. ... And there is no basis for them to have these huge profits. They're not inventing anything new. ... You set a baseline, and above that baseline you begin to tax their profits.

(And by "begin to tax their profits" we can assume she meant to say "tax them above and beyond the 40%+ they already pay, in Exxon Mobil's case a record $30 billion in 2007 alone.")

You can see why I confused the quotes.  The scapegoating of the global condition of high oil prices down to the very personal level of a far-off boardroom full of wealthy jerks is a pleasant fantasy, especially if you've got a candidate who's willing to smack them around, strap them down, and bleed them a bit.

The bizarre presumption that Carter and Clinton share, of passing moral judgment on the size and appropriateness of companies' profit levels (and of wield federal taxing authority to redistribute those profits as they see fit) is a bold step in a very bad direction.

Happily, you don't need to follow the economic causality, and you don't even need to have an opinion on the rightful duties of government.  All you need is a history book that goes back 30 years to assure yourself that Clinton's lust for oil company profits is a sickly and dangerous one.

Maybe that's why she's tucking it away inside the (mostly vacuous, but ultimately harmless) "gas-tax holiday" bill.  Maybe she's learned to hide, if not suppress, these deviant fiscal urges.

The Clinton-Menendez bill may be a toothless one, but if it's any indicator of her prospective domestic policy agenda, get psyched for a return to "growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation."

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Update: Captain Ed's got more on this.