Well at least one person thinks gas is too cheap. Unfortunately its the President of the United States! Friday President Obama called for a $10 per barrel tax on oil companies. Now why on earth would anyone consider such a drastic tax? Well the theory is honorable. The president has been making his case for infrastructure overhaul for years now. Time and time again he approached the podium at the state of the union address and made bold claims for mass transit, high-speed rail, self-driving cars and other infrastructure projects such as bridge and highway repairs. Congress continuously shot him down though as there was no practical way to pay for such a large undertaking.After much thought the president feels he has the answer, tax big oil! Oil is cheap and the general public largely see's big oil companies as fat cats who make plenty of money anyways. Well their is just one problem, Americans are smart and they very quickly realized that this $10 tax on the oil companies was really a 33% tax on the American public. The worst part is that this tax will phase in over then next 5 years. If for some reason oil prices decide to increase at any point in the next 5 years Americans will simply pay more and more at the pump.
I give the president credit though. In his defense there needs to be a way to pay for this but there is no way you can ask the tax payer to pay even more tax. So... create a tax that seems like it will hurt the very companies that Americans hate and you wont have to ask for a tax increase. It was a nice try but everyone see's right through it.
After all the uproar, speaker of the house Paul Ryan says there is "less than a 0% chance this passes the house". So for now it seems like this will pass and the President will have to find another way to pay for his lofty goals. That doesn't mean he's giving up though. At this moment Obama is preparing an even bigger speech to try and push his tax again. We'll see how this develops but its likely a big fight brewing in Washington.