fill 'er up

Remember that lack of policy creativity that I was faulting our leaders for this morning? Slate's Michael Kinsley has a novel idea: one that not only makes a lot of sense, but could also go a loooooong way to solving some of our gas pump problems.

His idea is, basically, to tax the oil companies on all the additional profit they've made because of turbulence in the Middle East. I'll let him explain:

A year ago, that price was about $46 a barrel. Now it's more than $70 a barrel... Let's round off a bit and say that American oil extractors are getting an extra $25 a barrel. For 150 million barrels a month, that's $45 billion a year. And that's just for the oil that's extracted.

Kinsley would have the government collect that $45 billion a year in taxes going forward, and put that money toward the war, which is a nice enough idea. But it could be spent in any number of ways. Hey Republicans! Just think: if spending $10 billion to give Americans $100 each will solve our fuel crisis, how much more solving can we do with $450 checks?

The sad thing is, that's probably exactly how Frist, Bush, etc. would look at it. (Though, you know, a $450 check from an oil company wouldn't be the worst thing...)

True, oil companies would react to such a law by lowering prices to the pre-tax level, so let's not spend that money just yet. But I don't think too many people would be upset about that outcome.