DeLay Says No Gas Tax Hike - But Dems Grabbing The Issue

"Republicans were not elected to raise taxes," DeLay, (R-Tex), says.

That statement by DeLay, the second ranking Republican in the House leadership, lends considerable clout to an effort by junior House GOP members who are leading an anti-gas tax revolt.

Not only are they getting help from such senior GOP House leaders as DeLay and House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, (R-Wisc) They also have support from the Bush administration.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta pointedly did not include a gas tax hike in the administration’s omnibus transportation bill unveiled last week.

Dubbed the Safe, Accountable, Flexible and Efficient Transportation Equity Act of 2003 (SAFETEA), the administration bill was sharply criticized by top leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Committee Chairman Don Young, (R-AK), says the White House proposal is "inadequate." Young, along with the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. James Oberstar, R-Minn., is the major sponsor of a six-year $375 billion proposal to raise the gas tax by 5.4 percent and index it to inflation in the future.

That would all but guarantee that motorists who need their cars to get to and from their jobs will be socked with a higher tax every year.

The proposal has been on the table for some time. An Oberstar spokesman reminded NewsMax.com that the bill itself has yet to be formally introduced.

Rep. Tom Petri, (R-Wisc), who chairs the Young committee’s Highway Subcommittee, also complained the Bush administration bill, pegged at a more modest $247 billion without the gas tax boost, does not raise enough money.

The biggest question mark at the moment is House Speaker Dennis Hastert. He is to be the recipient of the letter urging his opposition to the Young-Oberstar plan.

That letter is being circulated by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, (R.-Colo) whose experience as chairwoman of the Colorado State Senate Transportation Committee has prepared her resolve in the face of the arm-twisting tactics of pro-gas tax forces in Washington.

Sources tell NewsMax.com some lawmakers have been told that signing the Musgrave letter "would not be wise." The House Transportation Committee sits on many "vote-bait" pork projects all over the country.

Reps. Ron Paul, (R-Tex), and Jo Ann S. Davis, (R-Va) are the latest members to defy this pressure. They have signed on to the letter in support of America’s families.

Comes now an added irony: Will the Democrats - whose leaders normally never see a tax they don’t like - position themselves to score political points by excoriating the normally tax-cutting Republicans for, of all things, raising taxes?

A Robert Novak column in Sunday’s New York Post hints at that possibility in a gas tax article headlined "A GOP Tax Hike?"

NewsMax.com has stumbled over a March 6 statement by Rep. David Obey, (D-Wisc), the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

The comment, little noticed at the time Obey made it, called Republican Chairman Young’s gas tax proposal "nuts." The Wisconsin lawmaker added he "cannot imagine Congress in its right mind" adding to the burdens of "working people and hard pressed farmers" by increasing gasoline taxes "at a time when the White House is pushing to take millionaires off the tax rolls."

That last demagogic class-hatred comment, of course, overlooks the fact that 92 million Americans stand to get tax cut of over $1,000 under President Bush’s general tax cut proposals now being debated on Capitol Hill. That’s a lot of "millionaires."

But it does indicate Democrats may be licking their chops at the prospect of cutting Republicans off at the knees on their biggest economic issue--rescuing beleaguered taxpayers.

President Bush and Congressman DeLay obviously detect the contradiction here. The question is whether Speaker Hastert will listen to them or to big government Republicans such as Chairman Young.