WurfWhile

Just over two years ago, at the beginning of April 2004, George W. Bush put out an ad called “Wacky”:

“Bush: I’m George W. Bush and I approved this ad.

Announcer: Some people have wacky ideas. Like taxing gasoline more so people drive less. That’s John Kerry. He supported a 50 cent a gallon gas tax. If Kerry’s tax increase were law, the average family would pay $657 more a year.

Raising taxes is a habit of Kerry’s. He supported higher gasoline taxes 11 times. Maybe John Kerry just doesn’t understand what his ideas mean to the rest of us.”

The Bush campaign even had a calculator on their campaign website to see how much things would cost under this supposed proposal, depending on how far you drive.*

Well, the calculations on Bush’s deceptions have changed with the price of gas which then was $1.76 per gallon and now is about $3.00 per gallon.

Here is President George W. Bush’s “approved” number for the cost of a 50 cent tax per gallon on gas, per family:

$657/year

The gas tax was a policy that John Kerry hadn’t endorsed in ten years, since gas was $1.01 a gallon, and never had written or supported legislation for in congress. The Bush campaign knew it was misleading the American public.

But let’s play along. Here is a more accurate figure that such a tax would have cost at the time, according to FactCheck.org’s calculations based on the 2002 figures that they found were the most recent:

$598/year

Here, using both those figures, is the cost per family of Bush Administration energy policy due to the increase in gas cost they have done nothing to alleviate and have in some cases made worse with an average price now (4/24/06) of just over 2.91 a gallon:

Bush’s Estimate of How Much His Energy Policies Have Cost American Families Each Year:

$1,511.10

FactCheck.org’s Estimate of How Much Bush Energy Policies Have Cost American Families Each Year (calculations based on 2002 figures that they found were at the time the most recent):

$1,375.40

What is the difference between the Bush Administration’s actions and what they said John Kerry would do? Bush Administration policies are costing us 2.3 times the amount of a 50 cent gas tax per gallon - which means Bush Administration policies cost the average family $854.10 more each year than a 50 cent tax in April of 2004 would have cost them. But actually, it’s worse. Taxes are money our government collects to spend on the public. What we have effectively lost through Bush Administration policies versus a gas tax is almost the full amount of the additional cost of gas, or most of the extra $1,511.10 that each American family pays extra, on average, each year based on Bush Administration figures.

Is this misleading? Yes. Certainly Bush Administration policies are not the only variable to look at for changing gas prices - we could look to the effects of the Iraq War they launched for example (irony intended). However, just as Bush Administration policy isn’t the only variable in gas prices, a 50 cent gas tax implemented twelve years ago also would have not been the only variable in gas prices. That tax could have spurred more conservation efforts to reduce use, might have led to better developed alternative fuels - particularly if the tax revenue was used to create subsidies for alternative fuels, and likely could have had numerous other effects, including some very positive ones. At least the 50 cent tax could have been spent directly on the public, instead of our current situation where oil companies are making record profits and their CEOs are getting huge pay packages, one of them in the hundreds of millions. Taxes on business profits and personal income only come back to the public as a fraction of the total profits and salaries. Given a choice of paying that money either way, what would you choose?

Accuracy isn’t a hallmark of this Administration. Let’s take Bush to task by his own methods for costing average American families $854.10 more per year in gas, plus an additional loss of $450** more per year in public revenue than the amount he criticized John Kerry for in April 2004.

All I can say is, George Bush just doesn’t understand what his policies mean to the rest of us.

Notes:

* The source for the “calculator” is this and while I normally would have linked to it in the text above, the PBS News Hour transcript goes through so much length about other ads that I thought it best to put it in a note.

** I’m not a tax expert, and chose a relatively high tax rate of 31.5% that provided a nice round number (450) to use. If I were to guess, I would guess this is likely too high for what occurs in practice, with the various tax shelters and write-offs that businesses and individuals use to lower their tax rates.