Somehow I think any politician that suggests taxing oil/gas to the max as a means to force americans to consume less energy would have a very very short political career, especially when the majority of non-5%ers that can barely afford their over-leveraged paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle end up having to pay even more for their vehicles.
Afterall, according to Jonathan Gruber, the average american voter is stupid and would never vote for a tax that is supposedly good, but nevertheless being stupid, needs to be conned into doing something that is for the greater good:
In his terms this would be most likely explained as
“In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that fuel consuming people are going to pay in, it would not have passed, okay. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass”
