For the past few weeks, Mitt Romney, his surrogates and primary opponents have been railing against the rise in gas prices and, of course, blaming the surge in crude oil prices in world markets on Pres. Obama. Here is a sampling of their spin from Elizabeth Kolbert writing in the New Yorker:
“Higher energy prices would encourage energy efficiency across the full array of American businesses and citizens.”
– Romney in 2010[Romney] called on President Barack Obama to fire three of his Cabinet members: the Energy Secretary, Steven Chu; the Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar; and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson. According to Romney, the three have spent the past few years carrying out a not-so-secret plan to raise the price of gasoline at the pump. Only by firing the “gas-tax trio,” Romney told Fox News, can the President demonstrate that he did not approve of this plan. “Time for them to go,” Romney said.
Romney’s remarks came just days after Louisiana’s governor, Bobby Jindal, also on Fox, accused the Administration of driving up the cost of gas in the service of its “radical” agenda. “The reality is, gasoline prices have doubled under this President—highest prices for oil and gasoline in a hundred and fifty years,” Jindal said. “People used to think it was because of incompetence from the Obama Administration on energy. I think it’s because of ideology.” (As far as “reality” goes, Jindal’s characterization of gas prices is inaccurate; they were higher in 2008, under President George W. Bush.) Romney and Jindal, meanwhile, were echoing comments made by Newt Gingrich, who accused the President of adhering to a “radical ideology, which wants to artificially raise the cost of energy.” And Gingrich was following Rick Santorum, who, back in February, declared that Obama’s energy policies are based on a “phony theology” that “elevates the earth above man.
But in Romney’s ironically titled book, “No Apology,” published in 2010, he pushed the opposite approach. “Higher energy prices would encourage energy efficiency across the full array of American businesses and citizens,” he wrote back then. “…It would provide industries of all kinds with a predictable outlook for energy costs, allowing them to confidently invest in growth.”
And Romney is not the only member of his campaign team who has called for increasing energy costs as a means of social engineering. Per Kolbert again, check out what Gregory Mankiw, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush and is now an adviser to the Romney campaign, wrote in the New York Times in January:
Consider the tax on gasoline. Driving your car is associated with various adverse side effects, which economists call externalities. These include traffic congestion, accidents, local pollution and global climate change. If the tax on gasoline were higher, people would alter their behavior to drive less. They would be more likely to take public transportation, use car pools or live closer to work. The incentives they face when deciding how much to drive would more closely match the true social costs and benefits.
Economists who have added up all the externalities associated with driving conclude that a tax exceeding $2 a gallon makes sense. That would provide substantial revenue that could be used to reduce other taxes. By taxing bad things more, we could tax good things less.
Currently, the federal tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon. Raising the by $2 a gallon would likely have a catastrophic effect on the economy. But, as Elizabeth Kolbert points out, “When it comes to gas prices, it’s been clear for, well, let’s just say forever that the cost of gasoline in America is actually too low. Cheap gas generates sprawl and traffic. It discourages the use of mass transit and the development of alternative fuels. It contributes to regional smog and to global climate change.”
It’s clear that Romney is faking his current stance on energy, so, if he’s elected, there’s a better than even chance he’ll change his mind again. The question is, do the independent swing voters who will decide this election understand this, and if so, how can they know which Romney they’ll be voting for in November.
