(Alex Tien, Headline USA) It seems that Democrats in Washington believe they have found the solution to inflation and record-high gas prices. More government spending!
With American consumers facing increased costs of $2,000 this year in gas prices, Democrats believe that a little bit of extra cash will help ease some of the sticker shock that Americans are seeing at the gas pump.
Multiple proposals are being tabled, all by Democrat members of Congress.
A first proposal, titled simply, The Gas Rebate Act, is a bill proposed by Democrat lawmakers Mike Thompson of California, John Larson of Connecticut and Lauren Underwood of Illinois, proposes that the federal government would provide a monthly energy rebate of $100 per person. That refund would be for the rest of 2022, as long as the national average gas price topped $4 a gallon.
The gas stimulus would “provide middle-class Americans with monthly payments to ease the financial burden of this global crisis,” Thompson said in a statement about the proposal, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A second proposal, from Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., targets quarterly rebates that will be based on a tax levied on oil and gas companies.
The Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax would charge a per-barrel tax equal to 50% of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and its pre-pandemic average price between 2015 to 2019, according to a statement from the lawmakers.
Lastly, a third proposal from Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., would create a rebate based on oil company profits. It’s not easy to know how much money Americans would receive because the plan is based on taxing this year’s profits from oil and gas companies.
Why these lawmakers want to put a tax on oil companies for something American citizens consume so much of is certainly concerning.
