Below is a blog post from the Josh Zeitz for Congress campaign. Josh is a Democrat challenging Republican incumbent (and anti-choice caucus chair) Chris Smith in NJ-4.

Today, I paid $3.88 per gallon to fill up my car. Accustomed as I am to living on a history teacher's salary, I know how much these high gas prices hurt, and how they impact everything else we buy.

Recently, I had the privilege of speaking with 5th grade students at the Leadership Academy Charter School in Trenton about the issues they feel are important in this year's election. Nearly every student talked about how hard it was for their parents to afford the rising cost of gas. They also knew that when the price of gas goes up, so does the cost of food, clothing, and other basic necessities. The problem is so obvious that even fifth graders realize we're in a crisis, yet our leaders in Washington have let this problem fester so long that it's squeezing New Jersey families to the breaking point.

More after the jump.

It's No Wonder Michelle Calls Him Stinky!

As everyone knows, we are in a recession. The price of food has gone up dramatically. In fact there is a world wide shortage of food. Home sales are at historic lows. Foreclosures have skyrocketed. Jobs are being lost at an extraordinary rate. And the price of gasoline has gone up incredibly. Ordinary Americans are having to choose whether to fill up the tank or fill their bellies. Literally. And two brave politicians have bucked their parties offering a federal gas tax holiday throughout the summer to help out a little, especially to those in greatest need. John McCain first made this proposal but he refused to pay for it, driving us further into debt. Hillary embraced McCain's proposal but did did the responsible thing and required that the measure be paid for. Senator Obama has adamantly opposed this proposal. He has stated on numerous occasions that this is a gimmick that won't really help anyone. And the elite he is, he mocked the small savings that people would experience. Not exactly the compassion that we need in a leader. Especially to the least fortunate that live day to day. Senator Obama claimed that he has tried all this before and therefore he knows it is a gimmick. In fact when he was an Illinois Senator he voted to suspend the State gas tax three times. But he reached the conclusion afterward that it didn't actually help anyone. But Senator Obama was wrong.

Obama is wrong about the gas tax

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 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.

This report: $2.00 GAS! STUDYING THE EFFECTS OF A GAS TAX MORATORIUM is the only one actually done on the gas tax holiday and it proves conclusively that the holiday BENEFITED the citizens of Illinois. So it seems that Senator Obama isn't curious (like George Bush) enough to actually investigate the results of his actions. Or he is the one using a gimmick to hoodwink voters into believing that something his opponent proposes won't benefit them when according to the actual science, it will.

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:

Barack Obama has no shame. He will look you right in the eye and lie to your face with a big grin. And he won't even think about the consequences his lies have upon your life. Because with Barack Obama only one thing is important. Power. And he will resort to every trick in the book to get it. As you know, Obama opposes the gas tax holiday proposed by McCain and Hillary. And for convenience sake Obama decides to lump the two proposals together even though they are not only separate; one is responsible (Hillary) and one is not (McCain.) Then he uses the job loss card to scare Indiana voters into rejecting a proposal that will benefit each of their families. Because according to Barack Obama, if the people of Indiana support Hillary's plan to give tax relief to working families it will cost Indiana 6000 jobs.

Obama's Prepared Remarks for Indiana Presser

Just this morning, there was an article in the paper about how the real beneficiaries of this tax holiday would be the oil companies, who'd walk away with billions more in profits.

Meanwhile, unless you can magically impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies overnight to pay for the holiday, it could imperil federal highway funding, and cost Indiana more than 6,000 jobs.

So in one fell swoop, in a single sentence Obama manages to distort the purpose of the tax holiday and twist it around to make it appear as if Hillary is doing this to reward Big Oil. And there can only be one reason for doing that. He doesn't want the people of Indiana to realize how well financed he is by BIG OIL. And he sure doesn't want them to remember that it was him that voted for the Bush-Cheney-Obama Energy Bill that gave these huge profits to BIG OIL to begin with.

Cross posted at Pagan Power

Barack Obama has taken a stand. He doesn't support lowering your taxes. In fact, he considers doing so a political stunt. What I am of course referring to is his adamant opposition to proposed the federal tax holiday on gasoline this summer. Obama is against it for several reasons, none of them genuine. First he opposed to it because John McCain proposed it. Then he opposed it because Hillary proposed something similar. But instead of offering McCain's deficit increasing measure Hillary insisted it be paid for.

Obama Takes Heat for Opposing Gas Tax Holiday

"Senator Clinton is following Senator McCain's lead. I mean, McCain was the first one to come out with this and Senator Clinton said `me too,'" Obama said.

So poor ole Barack feels tag teamed and as everyone knows, he doesn't like a lot of pressure. Instead he prefers to eat waffles. Or is that just waffle?

A little examination into that elusive record of Senator Obama's reveals a little known fact. He was for a gas tax holiday before he was against it. No wonder John Kerry supports him so readily.

You may have heard recently that Barack Obama gladly accepts donations money from employees of oil companies "Big Oil" to fund his presidential campaign.

But what you may not know is, at this very moment the Obama campaign is lining its coffers with money from "Big Diarrhea."  You heard that right.

Yesterday, I told you about the little work of fantasy and fiction that Exxon Ed Whitfield calls a website. We looked at how Exxon Eddie threw away $106 billion dollars in corporate welfare, while casting the deciding vote in denying crucial funding for the programs our veterans were promised, and depended upon.

We all know that earlier this week President Bush showed his true colors by vetoing a bill that would expand the SCHIP program to cover millions of uninsured children. Although it had several Republican supporters, Mitch McConnell was not among them. Not only did McConnell vote against this bill, but encouraged Bush to veto it, and then cheered when he did. He and President Bush share the same desire to protect big insurance profits even over children. Unfortunately for them, Americans don't agree.