Charles Rangel: “I do know that election time causes us to do a lot of strange things, and certainly if anyone is serious about taking…”

“I do know that election time causes us to do a lot of strange things, and certainly if anyone is serious about taking off 4.3 cents from the Federal gasoline tax on a permanent basis, then we are talking about some $31 billion. Now, it may be true that we have just learned about balancing the budget, but certainly for those of my colleagues that have been advocating this for so long, what a heck of a time to be thinking about balancing the budget and cutting back revenue. Now, when I was on the committee trying to make certain that this bad idea, at least that it would be the consumer that would be the beneficiary, the protectors of the oil companies said, 'No, if you are trying to pass this through to the consumer, then you're manipulating the marketplace. What you have to do is to trust the oil people. They'll do the right thing. They'll pass it through to the consumer.' And so my motion to recommit merely says that we should make it mandatory, requiring the oil companies to pass the full tax savings on to the consumer and reimposing a tax if the company violates this requirement.”