Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The Audacity of Unfulfilled Promises

On my Economic Scorecard for the Candidates before last year’s election, the category I gave Barack Obama the most credit on was Taxing Energy Consumption. So, it is with great (although not entirely unexpected) sadness that I report Obama regression on the issue, pointed to by Greg Mankiw:

Obama rejects the Pigou Club
The Washington Post's Steve Mufson reports:

Goodness knows, President-elect Obama has his legislative hands full. Maybe that explains why he has taken the idea of increasing gasoline taxes off the table, saying that Americans had enough economic burdens at the moment. Nominees like Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize winning physicist who will become Energy Secretary, dutifully echoed Obama's view even though in Chu's case he has long supported higher fuel taxes.

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