Senate Republicans: Tax Gimmicks Won’t Solve High Energy Costs
Misguided proposals don’t address root cause of inflation, high gas prices
Washington, D.C.--U.S. Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the top Republican of the Senate Finance Committee, led a news conference with Republican Senators to discuss high gas prices and some of the Democrats’ misguided policy proposals to lower them. To watch the news conference in its entirety, click here.
Highlights:
“The fact that inflation was roaring for a year before Vladimir Putin even started the invasion in Ukraine--on multiple products, not just on oil and gas--is proof in and of itself. From the time President Biden took office to just before Russia invaded Ukraine, gas prices increased by 48 percent.”
Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyoming):
"Democrats are blaming high gas prices and inflation on everything but themselves. COVID, the economy, the supply chain, corporations, Putin. Blame, blame, blame, but they won't look in the mirror. Democrats know they have a very serious problem when it comes to American families. . . . A gas tax holiday is just a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. They put the bullet hole into the energy industry, and now they want to put a little Band-Aid over it by lowering it, but only until after the election, then if they get reelected, going right back up."
Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska):
“The Administration continues its policies, from day one, to undermine American working families with high energy prices and empower dictators abroad, and going now to beg dictators abroad for more energy.” Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina): “This is not an issue about partisan politics. This is an issue of how failed leadership feels to the average worker, on an average wage in our country. They deserve better from this Administration; they deserve gas prices they can afford.”
“To the guy or woman who is commuting, who has a fixed income, or the middle-income and lower-income families I represent--they are spending more and more, not just on gas, but this is about utility bills, too. In Ohio, our utility bills have gone up 40 percent, a lot of that is natural gas. It is about energy production generally, and it is affecting our economy in a very significant way.”
Senator John Boozman (R-Arkansas):
“The answer to soaring gas prices is staring us in the face: American energy independence. We've got the resources and technology to produce our own energy, in a more environmentally-sensitive way than other countries like Venezuela. It's time to unleash American energy.”
Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Mississippi):
“It’s been far more than a year that the waged war on American energy has taken place, and the best they can come up with is an election driven political gimmick: A gas tax holiday, which by the way, ends after the election.”
Senator Todd Young (R-Indiana):
“They have talked about gas cards; they have talked about suspending taxes on gas; they have talked about raising taxes on gas; the President of the United States weighs in with autocrats around the world to increase production to bring down the price. . . . The best Washington Democrats can come up with is to subsidize demand. . . . They are subsidizing demand at the very time they want to increase costs through regulations. It’s nonsensical; it’s absurd.”
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