defazio

Rising Democrat Party legislative star Rep Pete DeFazio, chairman of the House Highways and Transit committee has introduced a bill, HR3379, which he says fully funds a huge expansion of US transport spending without costing consumers a cent. DeFazio's bill has the acronym LOPSIDED Oil Prices Act, 'lopsided' standing for Lowering Oil Price Speculation for Infrastructure Dedicated to Economic Development.

Donald Boudreaux, economist at George Mason University in northern Virginia writes at Cafe Hayek that the Obama administration, in contemplating regulation has the wrong approach to fluctuations in the price of oil.

US Rep Pete DeFazio issued a statement today claiming that the solution to a funding gap in the proposed $450 billion six year highway and transit program is a tax on oil futures trades. DeFazio proposes a 0.02% tax on every oil futures contract and a 0.5% tax on futures option contracts. He says this would raise $190b over the six years of the STAA reauthorization, "more than enough to fill the gap." That's $32b/year.