Barack Obama has spent the past few days hammering both Hillary Clinton and John McCain for their support of a summer gas tax holiday. Obama tells North Carolina and Indiana voters it will only save them 30 cents a day - noting that’s not even enough money to buy a cup of coffee at 7-11. “For us to suggest that 30 cents a day for three months is real relief, that that’s a real energy policy means that we are not tackling the problem that has to be tackled. We are offering gimmicks. When we are offering the same thing that John McCain is offering on the cheap, that means that we’re not presenting a truthful response to the challenges that we face in America. We can do better than that this time,” he said last night in Raleigh.
Today in Indianapolis, Obama noted another flaw he sees in the holiday. “Does anyone here really trust the oil companies to give you the savings, when they could just pocket the money themselves? There’s not an expert out there that believes that this is going to work. There’s not an editorial out there that has said this is actually the answer to high gas prices. In fact my understanding is today, Senator Clinton had to send out a surrogate to speak on behalf of this plan, and all she could find was, get this, a lobbyist for Shell Oil to explain how this is going to be good for consumers. It’s a ’shell game,’ literally.”
Obama was referring to Steve Elmendorf, who, according to the Obama campaign is a Clinton supporter and a lobbyist for Shell Oil whose firms have earned $420,000 from the oil company from 2006-2008. The Obama camp also pointed out that Elmendorf has been promoting Clinton’s gas tax holiday on cable television - a conflict of interest, the Obama camp has implied.
“I think Senator Clinton has a good proposal to give people a gas tax holiday and we really ought to do something…Congress can do a lot of different things with the money they’re getting. I just think we ought to focus on consumers and what we can do to help them right now in this economic emergency this summer,” Elmendorf said on CNN last month.